through the operation of the heavenly bodies or of our own
iniquitous dealings, being sent down upon mankind for our correction
by the just wrath of God, had some years before appeared in the parts
of the East and after having bereft these latter of an innumerable
number of inhabitants, extending without cease from one place to
another, had now unhappily spread towards the West. And thereagainst
no wisdom availing nor human foresight (whereby the city was purged of
many impurities by officers deputed to that end and it was forbidden
unto any sick person to enter therein and many were the counsels
given[4] for the preservation of health) nor yet humble
supplications, not once but many times both in ordered processions and
on other wise made unto God by devout persons,--about the coming in of
the Spring of the aforesaid year, it began on horrible and miraculous
wise to show forth its dolorous effects. Yet not as it had done in the
East, where, if any bled at the nose, it was a manifest sign of
inevitable death; nay, but in men and women alike there appeared, at
the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or
under the armpits, whereof some waxed of the bigness of a common
apple, others like unto an egg, some more and some less, and these the
vulgar named plague-boils. From these two parts the aforesaid
death-bearing plague-boils proceeded, in brief space, to appear and
come indifferently in every part of the body; wherefrom, after awhile,
the fashion of the contagion began to change into black or livid
blotches, which showed themselves in many [first] on the arms and
about the thighs and [after spread to] every other part of the person,
in some large and sparse and in others small and thick-sown; and like
as the plague-boils had been first (and yet were) a very certain token
of coming death, even so were these for every one to whom they came.

[Footnote 4: Syn. provisions made or means taken (_consigli dati_).
Boccaccio constantly uses _consiglio_ in this latter sense.]

To the cure of these maladies nor counsel[5] of physician nor virtue
of any medicine appeared to avail or profit aught; on the
contrary,--whether it was that the nature of the infection suffered it
not or that the ignorance of the physicians (of whom, over and above
the men of art, the number, both men and women, who had never had any
teaching of medicine, was become exceeding great,) availed not to know
whence it arose and consequ