The Black Death of the Fourteenth Century.

Clutha Leader, Volume I, Issue 46, 27 May 1875, Page 7

The Black Death of the Fourteenth Century.

The Black Death was one of the most awful and universal calamities that ever befel mankind — a great tragedy, of which the time was the 14 th century, the place the whole of the then known world, the actors the human race. The age was a barbarous one ; the land was covered with fortified castles surrounded with stagnant moats ; property was not secure ; robbery and murder were frequent ; and perhaps in no age was human life valued less lightly. Nations were continually at war with nations ; kings were in continual conflict with their subjects; wild passions, severity and cruelty everywhere predominated. The common articles of clothing among the poorer classes was sheep-skin, and personal cleanlinesss was unknown. The people lived on gross diet. They ate large quantities of fresh and salted meat, but few vegetables : and ale was drank at every meal. The Black Death came to a people breathing a vitiated air, eating a gross and improper food, and drinking water which must have been frequently contaminated Tbis plague was no mere outbreak confined to a single town, city, or country ; wherever the food of men trod the pestilence followed them like a shadow. It began in China, where it was said to have slain 13,000,000 of people. From China it. followed three routes — one traversing Tartary by the Black Sea to Constantinople, a second directing itself from India to tho towns situated on the southern side of the Caspian Sea and Asia Minor, and by the third route attacking Bagdad, Arabia, Egypt, and the northern shore of Africa, from whence it branched into Europe. Arrived in Europe, it devastated Italy and Spain, and then the current of contagion appeared to divide into streams, the one passing through Germany, Poland, and Prussia, and the other crossing the Alps into France, Holland, and England. From England it was carried into Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, and it did not disappear until it had ravaged Iceland and Greenland. The intense heat of the tropical sun did not check its career, nor was it stayed by the icebergs and floes of the Arctic seas. It raged through all temperatures, a progressive infection of the zones. Themortalitywasappalling. 40,000,000 died in Europe, 100,000 in London, 50,000 in Florence, 100,000 in Venice, 60,000 in Avignon, &c, The island of Cyprus was almost depopulated, and the extraordinary spectacle was witnessed of ships driving about in the North Seas and the Mediterranean, the whole of whose crews had died of the plau^'e, and which carried the infection wherever they were blown. Boccacio has left a vivid description of the moral effects of the plague, telling 1 how the influence of every authority had vanished ■ how every one acted according to his fancy ; how some shut themselves up in their houses and allowed no intelligence of sickness or death to reach their ears ; how many lived on the most luxurious food, and passed their time in dancing and singing; how others, as if their death-knell was already tolled, abandoned their property to chance, and wandered about from tavern to tavern, seeking to gratify their depraved appetities ; how others again walked the streets with spices and sweet-smelling herbs in their hands, hoping by this means to avert the contagion. Boccacio tells further that the majority fled, and, carrying tho plague with them wherever they went, spread it far and wide. Thus it was that one citizen fled from another, a neighbor from his neighbors, a relation from his relations ; and in the end so completely had terror extinguished every kindlier feeling, that the brother forsook his brother, the sister her sister, the wife her husband, and even the parent his own child, abandoning them unvisited and unsoothed to their fate. Propriety and decorum were lost ; selfishness was predominant ; the dead and the dying were robbed by. the avaricious 1 thousands ended their days in the streets, and lay there unburied. The more special moral disorders which the plague occasioned might be traced in three remarkable events — one the persecution of the Jews, the second the rise and fall of the Order of the Flagellants, and the third the Dancing Mania of Germany, and the Tarantism of Italy. The Black Death is now extinct, like, leprosy, the sweating sickness, the scurvy, and the Oriental plague. — Dr Blyth. __________