In 1517 the disease lasted full six months and reached its
greatest height about six weeks after its appearance, but was
apparently limited to England. Meningeal symptoms were
characteristic of the third visitation of the disease. In 1528
and 1529 there was a fourth visitation which resulted in the
destruction of the French Army before Naples. It is said that in
1524 a petechial fever carried off 50,000 people in Milan, and
possibly this was the same disease. In 1529 the disease had
spread all over Europe, attended with great mortality.
Germany, France, and Italy were visited equally. The famine in
Germany, at this time, is described by authorities in a tone of
deep sympathy. Swabia, Lorraine, Alsace, and provinces on the
border of the lower Rhine, were frightfully affected, so that the
disease reached the same heights there as in France. In England
Henry VIII endeavored to avoid the epidemic by continual
traveling, until at last he grew tired of so unsettled a life and
determined to await his destiny at Tytynhangar. It was not the
inhabitants of the land alone who were affected, but even fish
and the fowls of the air sickened. According to Schiller, in the
neighborhood of Freiburg in Breisgau, dead birds were found
scattered under the trees with boils as large as peas under their
wings,--indicating among them a disease, and this extended far
beyond the southern districts of the Rhine.
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