that
isolated testimonies are often contradicted by many others. Thus the
chronicles of Strasburg, which only take notice of boils and glandular
swellings in the axillae and groins, are opposed by another account,
according to which the mortal spitting of blood was met with in Germany;
but this again is rendered suspicious, as the narrator postpones the
death of those who were thus affected, to the sixth, and (even the)
eighth day, whereas, no other author sanctions so long a course of the
disease; and even in Strasburg, where a mitigation of the plague may,
with most probability, be assumed since the year 1349, only 16,000 people
were carried off, the generality expired by the third or fourth day. In
Austria, and especially in Vienna, the plague was fully as malignant as
anywhere, so that the patients who had red spots and black boils, as well
as those afflicted with tumid glands, died about the third day; and
lastly, very frequent sudden deaths occurred on the coasts of the North
Sea and in Westphalia, without any further development of the malady.

To France, this plague came in a northern direction from Avignon, and was
there more destructive than in Germany, so that in many places not more
than two in twenty of the inhabitants survived. Many were struck, as if
by lightning, and died on the spot, and this more frequently among the
young and strong than the old; patients with enlarged glands in the
axillae and groins scarcely survive two or three days; and no sooner did
these fatal signs appear, than they bid adieu to the world, and sought
consolation only in the absolution which Pope Clement VI. promised them
in the hour of death.

In England the malady appeared, as at Avignon, with spitting of blood,
and with the same fatality, so that the sick who were afflicted either
with this symptom or with vomiting of blood, died in some cases
immediately, in others within twelve hours, or at the latest two days.
The inflammatory boils and buboes in the groins and axillae were
recognised at once as prognosticating a fatal issue, and those were past
all hope of recovery in whom they arose in numbers all over the body. It
was not till towards the close of the plague that they ventured to open,
by incision, these hard and dry boils, when matter flowed from them in
small quantity, and thus, by compelling nature to a critical suppuration,
many patients were saved. Every spot which the sick had touched, their
breath, their cl