In the history of such epidemics the
name of Hecker stands out so prominently that any remarks on this
subject must necessarily, in some measure, find their origin in
his writings, which include exhaustive histories of the black
death, the dancing mania, and the sweating sickness. Few
historians have considered worthy of more than a passing note an
event of such magnitude as the black death, which destroyed
millions of the human race in the fourteenth century and was
particularly dreadful in England. Hume has given but a single
paragraph to it and others have been equally brief. Defoe has
given us a journal of the plague, but it is not written in a true
scientific spirit; and Caius, in 1562, gave us a primitive
treatise on the sweating sickness. It is due to the translation
of Hecker's "Epidemics of the Middle Ages" by Babbington, made
possible through the good offices of the Sydenham Society, that a
major part of the knowledge on this subject of the
English-reading populace has been derived.
The Black Death, or, as it has been known, the Oriental plague,
the bubonic plague, or in England, simply the plague, and in
Italy, "la Mortalega" (the great mortality) derived its name from
the Orient; its inflammatory boils, tumors of the glands, and
black spots, indicative of putrid decomposition, were such as
have been seen in no other febrile disease.
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