THE * ITS SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC RESULTS By HERMAN B. ALLYN, M.D. PHILADELPHIA, PA.

THE spectacle of a pestilence march­ After they had suffered seven months of ing steadily on from East to West, pestilence they were advised to send the claiming thousands of victims, ark back with a trespass offering of five unchecked by anything that man golden tumors and five golden mice, can do, inspires horror, and in proportion “images of your tumors and images of to the degree of ignorance and helplessness your mice that mar the land.” The emerods that prevails, an angry resentment, with (tumors) were evidently swellings that the demand that something be done, even to might easily have been buboes. After the the extent of sacrifice. If in the story Philistines had sent the ark back the pesti­ of the spread of the in the Middle lence abated among them, but seems to Ages, with its processions, its futile worship have attacked the Israelites, ostensibly of this god or its vain offerings at that because some of them profaned the ark shrine, its torture and wholesale slaughter of by looking into it. It is certainly suspicious Jews, its burnings of suspected poisoners, of that those who were we are appalled at the ignorant brutishness attacked died very quickly: if they survived of mankind, let us remember that they long enough to develop tumors recovery were only just a little removed from pagan­ was possible. ism, and that even we have not yet, in our As we shall see later the pneumonic and day, acquired in full measure the conviction septicemic forms are extremely fatal in that all men are brothers. Moreover, it is from one to three days; if the victim lives only within the memory of some of us that four to seven days buboes develop. It is we have learned the causes and prevention quite probable that bubonic plague existed of typhoid, of , of , of malarial sporadically for many centuries. We know , of yellow and of plague. that there are endemic centers today in Since more has been accomplished in the , southern ; in Kurdistan; past fifty years by medical men in the in southwestern Arabia; in central Africa discovery of the causes of disease and in (Uganda) and doubtless also in , their prevention than in all the previous in central Asia and in Siberia. It is charac­ centuries, it may be interesting historically teristic of all great epidemic diseases that to review the progress and consequences they come in waves and then recede; that of the Black Death, which swept over when they attack a virgin population the Europe like a hurricane, causing many mortality is very great (for example, measles more deaths than the World War. We shall in the Faroe Islands); the same extreme at least be the more thankful for living in fatality is noted when the disease recurs the twentieth century. after an absence long enough to enable a Whether or not the plague that affected new generation of susceptibles to be born the Philistines after they had captured the and grow up. Ark of the Covenant was bubonic plague Whatever opinion may be held as to the affords a chance for an interesting discus­ antiquity of the disease, W. Bulloch and sion. You will recall that the men that Capt. S. R. Douglas are probably right in did not die were smitten with the tumors. saying: * Read before the Section of Medical History of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, May, The first historical notice of a disease like 1925. bubonic plague records its occurrence in Libya in the third century before Christ, or earlier; inclined to cast it in the phrases of Thucy­ but this notice is only contained in a fragment dides. There is some excuse for this, inasmuch from the writings of a much later physician, as the disastrous effects upon a com­ Rufus of Ephesus [about ioo a.d.], who also munity of any great pestilence are much the speaks of its occurrence in his own time in same: fear, paralyzing effort and abolishing Libya, Egypt and Syria. Whether it was clearly reason, justice, mercy and morality; heaps known to the classical Greek writers on medi­ of dead with too few living to bury them; cine is doubtful, but Aretaeus speaks of the survivors thinking only of their own pestilential buboes. The pleasure and profit: “Eat, drink and be described by Thucydides was apparently not this disease; nor was the destructive pestilence merry, for tomorrow' we die” being their in the reign of Marcus Aurelius alluded to by motto. Thucydides says: Galen. We meet with bubonic plague again, however, in the great , The season was admitted to have been w’hich started from Egypt, 542 a.d., and spread remarkably free from ordinary sickness; and if over a large part of Europe; it was described anybody was already ill of any other disease, it in Gaul as lues inguinaria. Epidemics succeeded was absorbed in this. Many who were in perfect one another in this and the succeeding century. health, all in a moment, and without any At the end of the seventh century bubonic apparent reason, were seized with violent heats plague prevailed in Italy and is unmistakably in the head and with redness and inflammation recorded by Bede in . But after that of the eyes. Internally the throat and the tongue time it is difficult to follow the track of plague. were quickly suffused with blood, and the Many European pestilences are spoken of in breath became unnatural and fetid. There mediaeval histories, which may or may not have followed sneezing and hoarseness; in a short been bubonic plague, though no sufficiently time the disorder, accompanied by a violent clear record remains.1 cough, reached the chest; then fastening lower Classical and medical literature is full down, it would move the stomach and bring on all the vomits of bile to which physicians of references to the plague. The word have ever given names; and they were very signifies a stroke or blow, an allusion both distressing. An ineffectual retching producing to the suddenness as well as to the severity of violent straining attacked most of the sufferers; the attack, particularly when the disease some as soon as the previous symptoms had assumes epidemic form. While gradually abated, others not until long afterwards. the word plague has come to be limited The body externally was not so very hot to the specifically to bubonic plague, due to the touch, nor yet pale; it was of a livid colour bacillus pestis, in earlier times it was inclining to red, and breaking out in pustules applied loosely to a number of different and ulcers. But the internal fever was intense: diseases with the common characteristics The sufferers could not bear to have on them of widespread distribution and great mortal­ even the finest linen garment. They insisted on ity. The best description of a plague in being naked, and there was nothing which they longed for more eagerly than to throw early times is that recorded by Thucydides, themselves into cold water. And many of those who writes of the plague in Athens in 430 who had no one to look after them actually b.c. Thucydides was himself attacked and plunged into cisterns, for they were tormented he witnessed the sufferings of others. So by unceasing thirst, which was not in the least vivid was the description given by this assuaged whether they drank little or much. classic writer that it has influenced unduly They could not sleep: a restlessness which was the writings of many others, notably Boccac­ intolerable never left them. While the disease cio, who have not been content to describe was at its height the body, instead of wasting objectively what they saw, but have been away, held out amid these sufferings in a marvel­ 1 Bullock, W., and Douglas, Capt. S. R. In lous manner, and either they died on the seventh Allbutt, Sir C. System of Medicine, Lond., 1912, or ninth day, not of weakness, for their strength ix, Part n, 358. was not exhausted, but of internal fever, which was the end of most; or, if they survived, angry or neglected gods. In the Middle then the disease descended into the bowels and Ages religious hatred added fury to igno­ there produced violent ulceration; severe diar­ rance. Crawfurd describes the persecution rhoea at the same time set in, and at a later of the Jews in the following language: stage caused exhaustion, which finally with few exceptions carried them off. For the disorder Amid all the panic of the Black Death, perse­ which had originally settled in the head passed cution of the Jews broke out with even greater gradually through the whole body, and, if a ferocity than during the Crusades in the twelfth person got over the worst, would often seize the century. Some victim was needed to appease the extremities and leave its mark, attacking the maddened populace: so the Jews were accused of privy parts and the fingers and the toes; and poisoning the wells, and even of infecting the some escaped with the loss of these, some with air. Circumstantial accounts were circulated the loss of their eyes. Some again had no sooner throughout Europe of secret operations directed recovered than they were seized with a forget­ from Toledo. The concoction of poisons from fulness of all things and knew neither themselves spiders, owls, and other supposed venomous nor their friends.2 was described, and its mode of distribu­ tion made known. So well did their accusers It seems to me noteworthy that Thucy­ deceive themselves that in many places the dides does not mention buboes in the plague springs and wells were sealed, so that no one at Athens. Yet buboes were well known at might use them, and the inhabitants of many the time he wrote. In the second Book of cities had to rely on rain and river water. If confir­ the Epidemics it is said: “fever supervening mation of poison were ever needed, the rack could on buboes is a bad sign, except they be be trusted to procure it: or, failing that, men could ephemeral: but buboes supervening on be found vile enough to deposit poison in places fever still worse.” As Thucydides was a in which circumstances demanded its presence. close observer it is a fair inference that Those who escaped the fury of the mob fell into if buboes had been characteristic of the clutches of an inexorable justice. In the case the plague at Athens he would have men­ of the Jews the suspicion of poisoning was tioned them. Those who are interested in prompted by the fact that at this time the practice of medicine, at any rate in southern the nature of the pestilence at Athens will Europe, was chiefly in the hands of Jewish find it discussed by Raymond Crawfurd, physicians. Hideous massacres of Jews had m.a., m.d., f.r.c.p., in his book on “Plague taken place in southern France and Spain in the and Pestilence in Literature and Art.”2 previous epidemics of a.d. 1320 and 1333, as we Dr. Crawfurd thinks it was typhus, an know from the writings of Rabbi Joshua. opinion held also by Murchison. There were a number of outbreaks of Many Christians also were accused of genuine bubonic plague, however, before being poisoners. It became dangerous to the one that occurred in the fourteenth touch a door or building with the fingers, century, known as the Black Death, which lest a charge of poisoning be lodged against particularly concerns us. And there were the suspected person, though no doubt he many pestilences in Italy and Rome, which was as free from evil act as were the witches probably were not plague. They may have of Salem. been typhus, malarial fever, typhoid, Hecker in his “Epidemics of the Middle influenza or other diseases which occasion­ Ages” gives the following account of what ally assume epidemic form. Whenever they was reported of the plague in eastern occurred there was the same panic, the countries before its arrival in Europe: same mob demand that something be done Cairo lost daily as many as ten to fifteen in the way of atoning sacrifice to placate thousand, being as many as in modern times 2 Jowett’s translation, quoted in Crawfurd, R. great plagues have carried off during their Plague and Pestilence in Literature and Art. Oxford, whole course. In China more than thirteen 1914. million are said to have died, and this is in correspondence with certain exaggerated ships most devastating pestilences, among accounts from the rest of Asia. India was them the Black Death. depopulated. Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Gasquet says that in the countries along Armenia were covered with dead bodies; the one of the trade routes by which the cara­ Kurds fled in vain to the mountains. In Cara- vans reached the Italian ports in the , mania and Caesarea none were left alive. it is certain that the plague was raging with On the roads, in the camps, in the caravansaries great virulence in 1346, the year before its unburied bodies were alone to be seen. In Aleppo five hundred died daily. Twenty-two thousand arrival in Europe. people and most of the animals were carried off Gabriella de’ Mussi, a notary of Piacenza, in Gaza in six weeks. Cyprus lost almost all is the chief contemporary Italian authority of its inhabitants, and ships without crews were upon the plague. He himself saw its out­ often seen in the Mediterranean as afterward in break in upper Italy. De’ Mussi declares the North Sea, driving about and spreading the that Italian merchants had occupied Tana plague wherever they went ashore. (Azov) and that in it they were besieged by Tartars and Saracens in 1346. The Whatever confusion may exist as to the Italians were driven out of Tana and took particular disease or diseases called plague refuge in Caffa, a Genoese settlement in and pestilence before and for some centuries the Crimea. The Tartars followed and laid after the Christian Era, by the Middle seige to Caffa. The death broke out in the Ages we have a very clear picture of bubonic Tartar and thousands died daily. The plague. It spread along the lanes of com­ Tartars threw the dead bodies of some of merce from China, India and Asia. Then their own people over the walls with the as now the West highly prized the products hope of infecting the garrison. The garrison of the East, especially spices, silks, gums. in turn cast the dead bodies into the sea, The merchandise was transported overland but nevertheless the city became infected by caravan to Bagdad, or by ship through and almost depopulated. Some of the the Persian Gulf to the Tigris, thence up the survivors took ship and carried the disease Tigris to Bagdad; or to Ormuz on the with them to Genoa in 1347. Crawfurd says Persian Gulf or to Aden at the entrance to these ships seem to have infected Constanti­ the Red Sea, thence by boat and caravan nople on the way. The Emperor Cantacu- to Koos on the Nile, or to Cairo, Pelusium zenos, quoted by Crawfurd, notes the early or . From Bagdad the route led low delirium, and distinguishes pneumonic, over the plains of Mesopotamia to Lycia, bubonic and carbuncular types of the the shortest route but the most dangerous disease. He mentions cervical and axillary on account of robbers. Another followed but not inguinal buboes, and also the dark the Tigris up into Armenia, thence to patches on the skin, that later came to be Trebizond and other Black Sea ports, termed “tokens.” Gasquet says that the or taking the road from the Caspian upon special symptoms of the plague in 1348 and the other side of the Caucasus which led 1349 were four in number: First, gangrenous to the Genoese and other Italian settle­ inflammation of the throat and lungs; ments in the Crimea. Some of you may need second, violent pains in the region of the to be reminded that in the fourteenth cen­ chest; third, the vomiting and spitting of tury Italy controlled the commerce of the blood, and fourth, the pestilential odor , and that Genoa and coming from the bodies and breath of the Venice, through their great merchant sick. The gangrenous inflammation of the princes, dominated all other cities in the throat might be explained by a tonsillar control of the eastern trade. They brought form of the disease, with secondary pyo­ untold wealth and prestige to their cities, genic such as causes the carbuncles and paid the price in introducing with their which are sometimes present. The second form, with severe pains in the chest, no bubonic form. Pleuritic pain may be felt on the doubt indicates a pleuropneumonic type. second, third, or fourth day; cough, with The vomiting and spitting of blood indicates expectoration, and rales heard on auscultation a severe type, septicemic or pneumonic. A may commence on the third, fourth, or fifth. contemporary writer says: “From the car­ The temperature is high, but does not differ buncles and glandular swellings many re­ especially from that in other forms of plague. The prominent symptoms are cough and blood­ covered: from the blood spitting, none.” stained expectoration. Sometimes, but not Matteo Villani, writing of the plague at always, marked haemoptysis and excessive Florence, says that the sick who began to dyspnoea with a tendency to cyanosis. The vomit blood quickly died. Guy de Chauliac respiration rate, according to Muller, was as a says the epidemic was of two kinds: The first rule over fifty, sometimes rising to seventy-five. was marked by a “constant fever and blood The auscultatory signs are those of lobular spitting, and from this the patient died in . The dulness on percussion is not three days.” The second form was the well- marked. The sputa have no characteristic known and less fatal bubonic type.3 These appearance, but are found to contain bacilli quotations make it evident that the Black in enormous numbers. These are also detected Death was bubonic plague; and that it in the blood. Swelling of the spleen is .very showed itself at first in its pneumonic and marked. Death occurs from failure of the heart. septicemic forms. Those who survived long In older accounts death is said to have occurred within two days. At Bombay about half the enough to have buboes sometimes recovered. cases were fatal within five days, but some were Even in our own time when the plague prolonged to a week or more. The disease is broke out in Manchuria, it presented itself almost invariably fatal. (Bulloch and Douglas.) in the pneumonic form, with a mortality of ioo per cent. As stated, the “great mortality” as it The adjective “black” as applied to was called, reached Genoa early in 1348, disease, as “black” measles and “black” and soon afterward another ship or other smallpox, probably means something more ships carried it to Venice. At Genoa the than a very severe type of the disease. I plague spared hardly a seventh of the recall that the late Dr. Curtin told me that population. The mortality in Venice was “black” measles was measles with pneu­ about the same. Gasquet says that out of monia. Our own more recent experience with twenty-four excellent doctors twenty died. influenza of the severe type in which there On Sunday March 30, 1348, the great council were deep cyanosis, hemorrhages and pneu­ of Venice chose a commission of three to watch monia is illustrative. I have no doubt that over the public safety. The rich fled from the the Black Death got its name because so place, officials could not be found, and the many of its early victims showed cyanosis, great council was so reduced that the legal petechial or other skin hemorrhages, and number for transacting business could not be pneumonia. gotten together. Notaries died in great numbers The symptoms of the pneumonic form are : and the prisons were thrown open. When the epidemic had ceased the senate had great diffi­ The attack begins usually with one violent culty in finding three doctors for the city. In rigor, or repeated shivers, but these may be this emergency, Marco Leon, a capable physi­ wanting. There are no prodromal symptoms. cian and a native of Venice, who was in practice , giddiness, vomiting, variable in at Perugia, agreed to return to Venice. (Gasquet.) intensity, follow. There is no primary . The facial expression is one of great anxiety Marco Leon seems to have had the and there is imperfect articulation as in the necessary moral courage to stick to his job, dangerous though it was. In this respect 3 Gasquet, F. A. The Great Pestilence (a.d. 1348-9) Now Commonly Known as the Black his conduct stands in sharp contrast with Death. Lond., 1893. that of Galen, who left Rome for Campania and later for Pergamus in the time of the Thousands sickened daily, and being alto­ pestilence brought from Syria by the army gether unattended and unsuccored died well- of Verus, a.d. 165, and with that of Galen’s nigh all without recourse, some in the open illustrious follower Sydenham, who aban­ streets. The corpses were laid before the doors doned until the plague had subsided. of the houses, where, especially in the morning, In 1423 a pest house or Lazaretto was those who went about might see corpses without number. Between March and the following July established in the island of Santa Maria what with the virulence of the pestilent sickness di Nazaret. Forty days was the and the number of sick folk ill-tended or for­ period, apparently because Christ spent saken through the fearfulness of those who were forty days in the wilderness. whole, it is believed that upwards of an hundred One of the earlier accounts of the plague thousand perished within the walls of the City is contained in the introduction to the of Florence. “Decameron” by Boccaccio. Boccaccio records that the plague visited Florence The most important and particular in the spring of 1348, spreading from the account of the pestilence at Avignon is East where it had appeared several years that of a certain canon of the Low Countries before. He says that it did not appear in who wrote at the time from the city to a Florence, as in the East, where, if any friend in Bruges. He was in the train of a bled at the nose it was a manifest sign of cardinal on a visit to the Roman Curia inevitable death, but that in men and when the plague broke out. He writes: women alike there appeared at the begin­ The disease is three fold in its infection. That ning of the malady certain swellings either is to say, firstly, men suffer in their lungs and on the groin or under the armpits, some as breathing, and whoever have these corrupted or large as a common apple, others the size of even slightly attacked, cannot by any means an egg, which were vulgarly called plague­ escape or live beyond two days. Examinations boils. From these two parts the buboes in a have been made by doctors in many cities of brief space appeared in every part of the Italy and also in Avignon by order of the Pope in order to discover the origin of this disease. body: Many dead bodies have been thus opened and Wherefrom after a while the fashion of the dissected and it is found that all who have died contagion began to change into black or livid thus suddenly have had their lungs infected blotches which showed themselves in many and have spat blood. [The first autopsies in first on the arms and about the thighs, and plague that I know of.] There is another form afterward spread to every other part of the of the sickness, however, at present running its person, in some large and sparse, and in others course concurrently with the first; that is, small and thick sown; and like as the plague­ certain aposthumes appear under both arms, boils had been first (and yet were) a very and by these also people quickly die. A third certain token of coming death, even so were form of the disease like the two former, running these to every one to whom they came. Not its course at this same time with them, is that only did few recover thereof but well-nigh all from which people of both sexes suffer from died within the third day after the appearance aposthumes in the groin. This, likewise, is of the aforesaid signs: this sooner and that later quickly fatal. The disease has already grown to and for the most part without fever or other such proportions that no doctor will visit a accident. sick man, even if the invalid would gladly give him everything he possessed; neither does a He then records seeing two hogs mangling father visit his son, nor a mother her daughter, and attempting to eat the rags of a poor nor a brother his brother, nor a son his father, man who died of the plague. Ina little while nor a friend his friend, nor an acquaintance's after turning round and round as if they acquaintance, nor in fact does anyone visit had taken poison they fell down and died another unless he is prepared to die with him or upon the rags. quickly follow after him .... To put the matter shortly, a half or more than a half of the Somerset to . It will be noticed people at Avignon are already dead. Within the that the plague was carried to Europe in walls of the City there are now more than seven ships, first from seaports in the Black Sea thousand houses shut up. In these no one is to Messina, Genoa and Venice, thence to living, and all who have inhabited them are , and again, after sweeping departed. through France, to England by way of The canon also says that at Marseilles . Ships are notoriously full of all the gates of the city with the exception and are by no means exempt from of two small ones were closed, for there (Pulex cheopis and Ceratophyllus fascia- four-fifths of the inhabitants were dead. tus) and other vermin. There are vivid Guy de Chauliac, in writing of the epi­ descriptions of ships, the crews of which demic at Avignon, says: had all died of plague, drifting about in both the Mediterranean and the North The mortality commenced in the month of Seas. When the ships struck land and were January, 1348, and lasted for the space of seven boarded by the inhabitants the plague months. It was of two kinds: the first type lasted broke out. two months with constant fever and blood spit­ For the spread of the Black Death into and ting, and with this people died within two days. through England I have followed Gasquet, The second lasted the rest of the time. In this, who, while not a physician but an abbot, together with constant fever, there were external carbuncles or buboes under the arms or in the has delved deeply into the original writings groin, and the disease ran its course in five days. of the period, including the church records, the Patent Rolls on which are kept the grants He goes on to say that the mortality was so and presentations to livings, and the Inqui- great that it left hardly a fourth of the sitiones post mortem for the period of the population. Even the doctors did not care plague. to visit the sick from fear of infection, and It seems that the plague was brought when they did visit them they attempted from Calais to Melcombe Regis (Weymouth), nothing to heal them, and thus almost all a sea-coast town of Dorsetshire, either in those who were taken ill died, excepting the summer or autumn of 1348. Melcombe toward the end of the epidemic when some Regis was a town of considerable impor­ few recovered. And then he adds: “As for tance at this period, for during the seige of me, to avoid infamy, I did not dare to Calais by Edward in it furnished him with absent myself, but still I was in continual twenty ships and 264 mariners, while fear.” As a matter of fact, toward the end Bristol sent only twenty-two ships and 608 of the sickness, de Chauliac did take the sailors, and even London sent only twenty- infection and was in great danger for six five ships and 662 men. The summer and weeks, but in the end recovered. autumn of 1348 were abnormally wet. It In 1348 the plague attacked England. rained day or night with hardly an excep­ In that year Calais was in the possession of tion from June 24 to Christmas. I believe the English. The islands of Jersey and fleas thrive in dampness, so that the weather Guernsey, with which England was in con­ may have had something to do with the stant communication, were decimated by rapid spread of the plague. However that the disease. Ships passing from Calais, in may be, the Black Death spread from all probability, carried the plague to the Melcombe Regis, apparently first by water­ seaports of England. Galfrid Ie Baker says ways, to Bristol and rapidly throughout that it first came to a seaport in ­ England. London is said by some to have shire and then into the country, which it been attacked as early as September 29, almost deprived of its inhabitants, and while others make the date as late as Novem­ from thence it passed into Devon and ber 1. Fifty thousand are said by Stowe to have been buried in one churchyard. The Economic and Other Results of the narrow and dirty streets, the low unventi­ Black Death lated and undrained houses, the lack of 1. The Black Death caused perhaps a personal cleanliness, no rooms above ground, greater loss of life than any pestilence no soap or linen, living half the year on before or since of which we have knowledge. salt meats, all favored the rapid spread of It not only killed from a third to a half of the plague. Even in 1361, twenty-two years the population of England, but it was later, it was the custom to kill cattle and equally fatal throughout the whole of hogs in the streets and cast the offal into Europe and what we now call the Near the Thames, for in that year the king for­ East. It was not so fatal in Germany as bade it by letter. The exact loss of life elsewhere, nevertheless the average mor­ caused by the tality for the whole of Europe was not less cannot be determined. In fact there is no than one-third, and it was probably nearer agreement as to the number of the popula­ one-half the population. Such tremendous tion before the epidemic set in. Gasquet loss of life was bound to have noteworthy says it is placed at four or five millions by results on industry, on prices, on customs some, while Rogers thinks it could hardly and on morals. Success, as Osler once said, be greater than 2,500,000, and probably is sometimes a question of survivorship. was not more than 2,000,000. There is The man who survived the Black Death general agreement, however, that the Black found himself, as laborers did during and Death carried off about half the population. after the World War, in a much better Gasquet calculates that from the numbers economic position. of institutions some 5,000 beneficed clergy We shall confine our statements to Eng­ died of plague. He adds that this number in land because the researches of Gasquet and reality represents only a portion of the Rogers have supplied so much valuable clerical body, and that in any estimate of information about this country. Before the whole, allowance must be made for the plague there was a good harvest in chaplains, chantry priests, religious and England. At the time of the plague “there others. “On this basis, and assuming the was sold a quarter of wheat for i2d., a deaths of beneficed clergy to have been quarter of barley for qd., a quarter of 5,000, the total death-roll in the clerical beans for 8d., a quarter of oats for 6d., a order would be some 25,000.” large ox for 4od., a good horse for six shil­ The clergy seem to us to have been lings, and even for i8d.” There was such a surprisingly numerous in England consider­ scarcity of laborers that none could be had ing the population, and the same is true of for agricultural purposes. Twysden, quoted its religious houses. Gasquet says that by Gasquet, says: “In the following autumn “in Nottinghamshire the proportion of no one could get a harvester for less than 8d. deaths in the beneficed clergy is found, as in with food. For this reason many crops other cases, to be half of the total number. perished in the fields . . . In one case where Out of 126 benefices in the county the incum­ the owner of the property had died on the bent died in 65 . . . In all, not including 28th of July, 1349, it is said that 114 acres its 49 monasteries, the beneficed clergy of of pasture were let at I2d. per year, and ‘not the county numbered some 700.” If the more this year because of the mortality and non-beneficed clergy were five times as dearth of men.’ ” At Cliffe, apparently on numerous as the beneficed, this would property belonging to the deanery of Holder- make the figures for Nottinghamshire above ness, the rents of customary tenants and 3,500, not including the 49 monasteries. tenants at will are stated to have been usu­ This was a heavy burden for the people ally worth ten pounds five shillings a year, and for the land to maintain. but in this special year they had produced only two shillings. Prof. Thorold Rogers Englisch.” Thus the Black Death contrib­ declares that everything that the land uted not a little toward making the lan­ owner had to buy rose from to 50 to 200 per guage of Chaucer and of Langland in Piers cent. Iron, salt and clothing doubled in Plowman the language of the nation. value. Herring, which formed an important 3. Farming at that time was under a part of the food of that generation, became manorial system, under the supervision of so dear it was out of reach of the multitudes. bailiffs, and the farmers practically, if not 2. Since the French actually, serfs. They were not permitted to had been not only the language spoken by leave the land.The land was in common, the the nobility and the clergy, but it had been, villeins supplying the tools and teams and up to the fourteenth century, the language perhaps the food when they worked the taught in the schools. This was not entirely manor lands,, as they did for the privilege a matter of choice, because instruction was of farming their strips. But, after the plague, almost exclusively in the hands of the laborers, as stated, were scarce. They would clergy. Time and separation from France not farm the land unless paid wages. There inevitably led to great corruption in the were disputes as to what the wages should French in common use. You will recall that be. The king issued orders that laborers Chaucer says of the Prioress that she spoke should work for the former wages; but the French: orders were not enforceable. If the church owners paid wages for their harvesting, it After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe. took sometimes more than they could obtain from the sale of the grain. If they did not The successful war of Edward 111 against pay wages, the grain was likely to rot uncut. the French, the celebrated victories of In either case the churches were, in many Crecy and Poitiers, the capture of Calais, instances, compelled to appeal to the king were possible because the national spirit of for remission of the sums due to him. the English was back of the war. The Eng­ To be brief, a result of this struggle was lish army was not an army of serfs and gradually a change in land tenure, a leasing vassals. It was recruited largely from the system giving place to the former bailiff yeomanry and was paid by the king. It was system. Moreover, the commons were broken the clothyard shafts of the yeomanry, the up into pieces by hedges to simplify farming. shafts made famous in the stories of Robin These hedges, I believe, are still to be seen. Hood, which mowed down the French Ina more recent study of the Black Death knights and their horses. So far as I know on the estates of the See of , Miss this was the first national army ever raised A. Elizabeth Levett4 maintains that there in England. When, therefore, the Black were no sudden or violent economic changes Death swept away so many of the clergy and wrought by the Black Death. Changes in the teachers, the times were ripe for a the labor service on the Episcopal manors change in education. If the English could had begun in 1208, but they were not yet defeat the French in war there was no reason complete in 1455. “No single manor in the why they should be dependent upon France Account Rolls had entirely commuted its for its language. Therefore when John Corn­ labor services.” Wages did increase, however, wall, described as a “maister of Gramer,” especially those of artisans and particularly who probably from his name was Cornish, those of the plumber. Perhaps the See of began to teach English in the schools, his Winchester was more conservatively man­ example was quickly followed, so that when aged than other estates. The bishop may Trevisa wrote in 1385, he could say that in have been able to exercise greater control all the grammar schools of England the chilX 4 Levett, A. E. Oxford Studies in Social and Legal dren “Ieveth Frensch,\and .constructh in History. Oxford, 1916, Vol. v. over his tenantry. It is reasonable to the ancient Chancellors, when I was suppose, too, as Miss Levett indicates, that Chancellor there.”6 the plague was not as destructive in some The editor says on the passage: parts of England as it was in others. They, i.e., the students, came from all parts 4. We have seen what a heavy toll was of Europe. The number seems incredible, but taken of the clergy, fully fifty per cent Oxfordshire was, to judge from its rating for having died. One result was the difficulty of exceptional taxation, after Norfolk, then at the replacing them. The clergy behaved very best of its industries, the wealthiest county in much as the laborers did; they demanded England by a considerable proportion. . . . higher salaries. Gasquet says that whereas This concourse of students was diverted by the before the pestilence, when there were great plague. ... I see no reason to doubt plenty of priests, anyone could get a the statement about the exceeding populousness chaplain for five or even four marks, or of Oxford in the first half of the 14th century. for two marks and his board, after the (Gasquet.) plague there was hardly a soul who would The King was so disturbed by the great accept a vicarage for twenty pounds. In falling-off that he addressed a letter to the Winchester Diocese which he cites as the bishops on the subject, urging that the as example, the average number of priests clerical order be increased in number, ordained in each of the three years preceding morals and knowledge. 1349 was 111, in the fifteen subsequent 6. It is the general testimony of most years up to 1365, the yearly average was observers that the effect of the Black Death barely twenty, and in the thirty-four years was, as we have found war to be, destruc­ from 1367 to 1400, the annual average tive of moral and religious restraints. Instead, number of ordinations was only twenty­ as some might think, that imminence of seven. The scarcity of men for the priest­ death makes a man walk in the fear of God, hood can be attributed in part-to the great in the presence of plague, he fears his own demand for the services of survivors to fears, but neither God, man nor devil; carry on the business of the nation. he becomes brutish and licentious. In 5. The Universities of Oxford and Cam­ England, and probably the same was true bridge suffered the loss of thousands of on the Continent, the young, inexperienced students. “The celebrated FitzRalph, Arch­ clergy who had to be appointed to replace bishop of Armagh, who had been Chan­ those who had died from plague, naturally cellor of the University before the event, exercised very little restraining influence declares that in his time of office there were on the people. 30,000 students at Oxford5: “So yt in my As the combined result of the low state tyme, in ye University of Oxenford were of intelligence and morals, of the inability thrilty thousand scolers at ones, and now of the clergy to inspire confidence in their beth unneth six thousand.” In this state­ spiritual leadership, of the prevailing con­ ment he is borne out by Gascoigne, who, viction that supplication to God, or the writing his “Theological Dictionary,” in intercession of some saint (Sebastian or the reign of Henry vi, says: “Before the Rocco were the most popular) would avert great plague in England there were few the plague, there developed societies* based quarrels between the people and few law upon the idea that mortifying the flesh by cases, and so there were also few lawyers the penance of public scourging would in the and few in appease offended deity and avert the plague. Oxford, when there were 30,000 scholars Thus during the the “Flagel­ at Oxford, as I have seen on the rolls of lants” in great numbers marched through the 5 Harf ms., 1900, vol. 11. Trevisa’s translation of 6 Gascoigne. Loci ex Libro Veritatum. Ed. J. E. FitzRalph’s Propositio Coram Papa. Thorold Rogers, p. 202. cities, singing dirges and beating themselves Pare recommends the wearing of an amulet with cords. Sometimes they took possession of arsenic over the heart in order that “the of a city, to the great disturbance of peace, heart might become accustomed to poison, order and quiet. They became such a nui­ and so be the less innured when other poi­ sance even to the regular clergy that finally sons sought it.”9 they were forbidden by the pope.7 Though good does not arise out of evil, the The helplessness of the medical profession very magnitude of the evil does sometimes in the presence of plague and the extent to inspire men of common sense and human which even the more intelligent of them sympathy to the establishment of an insti­ were dominated by current superstitions of tution of recognized helpfulness. To the the time may be judged by the advice of plague in Florence, 1244 a.d., we owe the Guy de Chauliac. According to Raymond founding of the first ambulance society in Crawfurd, among other preservatives he Europe, the Campagnia della Miscracordia. reckoned venesection, purification of the It is curious and amusing to read that the air by means of fires, comforting the heart money for the purpose was acquired through with treacle and apples and things of savory the lines paid by wool-sorters for the use of flavor, consoling the humors with Galen’s foul and blasphemous language at their Armenian bole, and the prevention of meeting-house. One of their number, Piero putrefaction by the use of bitter things. di Luca Borsi, induced them, when the Should the disease defy all these precautions, fines had reached a large sum, to spend the he then commends, as curative measures, money in the purchase of six litters, one and evacuations, with electuaries for each ward of the city, and to select two and cordial syrups. Buboes should be of their members weekly for each litter to ripened with poultices of figs and boiled carry sick persons to the hospitals or dead onions, pounded and mixed with leaven bodies to their burial. I have heard that the and butter. Then they should be opened and society is still in existence. treated like ulcers.8 Anyone who is interested in the effect Ambroise Pare at a later date was not of the plague upon art should consult above the unworthy suspicions of his time. Raymond Crawfurd’s interesting book. It is He writes: surprising how many great artists have What shall I add? They must keep an eye on painted plague scenes, or have portrayed St. certain thieves, murderers, poisoners, worse than Sebastian or St. Rocco, the patron saints of inhuman, who grease and smear the walls and plague. doors of rich houses with matter from buboes As to the effect of the Black Death on and carbuncles and other excretions of the architecture I am not competent to speak, plague-stricken, so as to infect the houses and but those who have studied the subject seem thus be enabled to break into them, pillage and to agree that building was almost stopped strip them, and even strangle the poor sick in for a while, and that where it was resumed their beds: which was done at Lyons in the after interrruption there can be traced a year 1565. God! What punishment such fellows replacing of the figured and ornate style by deserve: but this I leave to the discretion of the magistrates, who have charge of such duties. the perpendicular. 7 Crawfurd, R. Op. cit., p. 104. 9 Pare, A. Livre de la Peste. Quoted by Crawfurd, 8 Crawfurd, R. Op. cit., p. 121. R., op. cit., p. 158.