Later
on in the history of the plague the inflammatory boils and buboes
in the groins and axillae were recognized at once as
prognosticating a fatal issue.
The history of this plague extends almost to prehistoric times.
There was a pest in Athens in the fifth century before Christ.
There was another in the second century, A.D., under the reign of
Marcus Aurelius, and again in the third century, under the reign
of the Gauls; following this was the terrible epidemic of the
sixth century, which, after having ravaged the territory of the
Gauls, extended westward. In 542 a Greek historian, Procopius,
born about the year 500, gives a good description of this plague
in a work, "Pestilentia Gravissima," so called in the Latin
translation. Dupouy in "Le Moyen Age Medical," says that it
commenced in the village of Peleuse, in Egypt, and followed a
double course, one branch going to Alexandria and the other to
Palestine. It reached Constantinople in the Spring of 543, and
produced the greatest devastation wherever it appeared. In the
course of the succeeding half century this epidemic became
pandemic and spread over all the inhabited earth. The epidemic
lasted four months in Constantinople, from 5000 to 10,000 people
dying each day.
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