nt. Thus far the ordinary circumstances only of the
oriental plague occurred. Still deeper sufferings, however, were
connected with this pestilence, such as have not been felt at other
times; the organs of respiration were seized with a putrid inflammation;
a violent pain in the chest attacked the patient; blood was expectorated,
and the breath diffused a pestiferous odour.

In the West, the following were the predominating symptoms on the
eruption of this disease. An ardent fever, accompanied by an evacuation
of blood, proved fatal in the first three days. It appears that buboes
and inflammatory boils did not at first come out at all, but that the
disease, in the form of carbuncular (_anthrax-artigen_) affection of the
lungs, effected the destruction of life before the other symptoms were
developed.

Thus did the plague rage in Avignon for six or eight weeks, and the
pestilential breath of the sick, who expectorated blood, caused a
terrible contagion far and near; for even the vicinity of those who had
fallen ill of plague was certain death; so that parents abandoned their
infected children, and all the ties of kindred were dissolved. After
this period, buboes in the axilla and in the groin, and inflammatory
boils all over the body, made their appearance; but it was not until
seven months afterwards that some patients recovered with matured buboes,
as in the ordinary milder form of plague.

Such is the report of the courageous Guy de Chauliac, who vindicated the
honour of medicine, by bidding defiance to danger; boldly and constantly
assisting the affected, and disdaining the excuse of his colleagues, who
held the Arabian notion, that medical aid was unavailing, and that the
contagion justified flight. He saw the plague twice in Avignon, first in
the year 1348, from January to August, and then twelve years later, in
the autumn, when it returned from Germany, and for nine months spread
general distress and terror. The first time it raged chiefly among the
poor, but in the year 1360, more among the higher classes. It now also
destroyed a great many children, whom it had formerly spared, and but few
women.

The like was seen in Egypt. Here also inflammation of the lungs was
predominant, and destroyed quickly and infallibly, with burning heat and
expectoration of blood. Here too the breath of the sick spread a deadly
contagion, and human aid was as vain as it was destructive to those who
approached the infect