Diabolus

“ Now, these brave men being dead, what do the rest of the townsfolk but fall down and yield obedience to Diabolus, and having eaten of the forbidden fruit, they become drunk therewith, and so opened both Eargate and Eyegate, and let in Diabolus and all his band, quite forgetting their good Shaddai and his law.
Diabolus now bethinks himself of remodelling the town for his greater security, setting up one and putting down another at pleasure. Wherefore he put out of power and place my lord mayor, whose name was my lord Understanding, and Mr. Recorder, whose name was Mr. Conscience. ”

“ They that buried them buried also with them their arms, which were cruel instruments of death: (their weapons were arrows, darts, mauls, firebrands, and the like) . They buried also their armour, their colours, banners, with the standard of Diabolus, and what else soever they could find that did but smell of a Diabolonian doubter. ”

“ 'Another part or piece,' said Diabolus, 'of mine excellent armour is a dumb and prayerless spirit—a spirit that scorns to cry for mercy; wherefore be you, my Mansoul, sure that you make use of this. ”

“ Drynk from hym thou woldyst evyr hyde;
On covetyse was alle thy thought.
Primus diabolus. In wratthe thi neybore to bakbyte,
Them for to hangere was thi delyte,
Thou were evyr redy them to endyte;
On the seke man rewyst thou nought.
Secundus diabolus. Evyr more on envye was alle thi mende,
Thou woldyst nevyr vesyte no presoner;
To alle thi neybores thou were unkende,
Thou woldyst nevyr helpe man in daunger.
Tertius diabolus. The synne of slauthe thi sowle xal shende,
Masse nore mateynes woldyst thou non here,
To bery the deed, man, thou woldyst not wende,
Therfore thou xalt to endles ffere ”

“ Scarlet fever, influenza, yellow fever, relapsing fever, and malaria (if the war is waged in countries where this disease is endemic—especially in the Lower Danube region, in the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy) have also played an important rôle in many wars. But we give the name ‘war pestilences’ only to those infectious diseases which in the course of centuries have usually followed at the heels of belligerent armies, such as typhus fever, bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, and small-pox ”

“ It is a well-known fact, established long, long ago, that all such plagues as cholera, for instance, or typhoid fever, are caused by germs of disease afloat in the air, or in the water, and through these media introduced into the human system. These germs are ferments so strong, poisons so powerful, that if they once succeed in gaining ingress to the blood, hardly can all the skill of medicine destroy them or render them innocuous. Yet we daily hear of medical men and nurses walking about in the midst of plague and pestilence, but coming through the outbreak all unscathed. ”

“ In the first and last period, carbuncles and confluent petechiæ, or broad maculæ, are very rarely met with; whereas in the middle period, when the disorder rages with the greatest fury, they both occur in one and the same subject, and denote the utmost danger. At this period, (viz. when the plague is at its height) the pestilential particles being more virulent, more volatile, and more subtile, enter the body more readily, act upon it with greater force, and produce a disease which runs its course with greater rapidity than in either of the other two degrees or varieties of the plague. ”

“ The Devonshire diffusion was like the spreading circles in a still pool. The spread of influenza was like the flying ripples on a broad surface of water. The spread of plague, on the occasions when it was universal, was like the massive rollers of the depths, the onward march of cholera from the East having, in our own times, illustrated afresh the same momentum. ”

“ In addition to the wide-spread desolating epidemics which appear from time to time, mysterious in their origin, progress, and cessation or disappearance—such, for example, as the plague of Athens, the plague of London in the time of Charles the Second of happy memory, the Indian or Asiatic cholera of modern times, and the disease called influenza, a frequent visitor to Western Europe during the last half-century—there exist localities unceasingly under the influence of a poison inimical to human life. ”

“ The cause of the most violent kind of plague then we must suppose to be something received into the body, which in a certain time, probably sooner or later according to the strength of the contagion, disposes to an irregular emission of its heat, which coming by a kind of explosions, or, as Dr. Hodges calls them, blasts, produce those eschars which have been called tokens, and seem to be no other than partial combustions, by which the parts affected are reduced to a state of charcoal, or nearly so. ”

“ It must, however, not be forgotten that during the prevalence of an epidemic every one is more or less under its influence, and but little is wanting to call forth the disease. Some years ago a well-known physician, with whom I was intimately acquainted, died from facial erysipelas and meningitis which had originated in a slight abrasion of the upper lip. During an epidemic of typhoid we daily see persons with fever, headache, and lassitude. Diarrhoeas are frequent during an epidemic of cholera. An epidemic of diphtheria is accompanied by a great number of cases of pharyngitis. ”

“ This disease was a consequence of violent commotions in the earth’s organism—if any disease of cosmical origin can be so considered. One spring set a thousand others in motion for the annihilation of living beings, transient or permanent, of mediate or immediate effect. The most powerful of all was contagion; for in the most distant countries, which had scarcely yet heard the echo of the first concussion, the people fell a sacrifice to organic poison—the untimely offspring of vital energies thrown into violent commotion. ”

“ From nearly all parts of China reports are being sent to the newspapers of the occurrence of a severe epidemic of disease which seems to manifest itself in various forms. In Wusuch, where the disease is called ‘the five days’ plague’ the symptoms are said to be not unlike those of cholera, death in some cases ensuing in less than a day. ”

“ North Germany until the Peace of Prague In the year 1630 began in Saxony—in the wake of marching troops—that deadly pestilence which soon spread over all Germany and was chiefly responsible for the enormous loss of human life there in the course of the Thirty Years’ War. We may safely assume that bubonic plague was the most common disease, although both typhus fever and dysentery were of frequent occurrence. ”

“ It may now again be asked, if the plague, or violent epidemics, be produced by electric strokes, why are they not much more frequently felt, or by what are those milder diseases produced which are not accompanied by any sensible stroke? Here we can be at no loss to say, that whatever produces the highest disease, may also produce the lowest. But, besides this argument, we have positive evidence that commotions in the electric fluid211 will not only produce sickness, but very extraordinary and seemingly miraculous effects upon inanimate bodies. ”

“ Then several cases of typhoid fever broke out, owing to the insanitary conditions; but strangely enough the disease did not spread, and the mortality from it was small. Imagine the miseries of an unhappy man, who, while suffering from a smashed thigh which prevented him from even moving to resist the maggots that assailed him, was then smitten with small-pox or typhoid fever!
Little by little the septic troubles increased, and at last the crown of misery was reached when hospital gangrene made its appearance. Few civilian medical men now practising have ever seen hospital gangrene ”

“ Here in the lazaretto they are spoken with across two barriers, a few paces from each other, without fear of contagion. Hence it would appear that the plague is communicated only by the touch, or still more by wearing infected clothes.——Giovanelli: If one speaks of an infected person shut up in an unventilated chamber, it may be said that the whole chamber is dangerous; but if one speaks of a patient exposed to the open air, it has been proved that the infection does not extend beyond five geometrical paces from the body. Beyond this distance one is in safety. ”

“ Had such a vapour attached itself to a human body, it is possible that it might have set fire to it as well as to the stack of corn or hay. Whether these accounts render the story of the Genoese sailors concerning the ball of fire occasioning the plague of 1346 more credible, we leave the reader to judge. They certainly show, however, that the electric fluid will sometimes interfere with the human body in a very terrible manner, producing, where it does not kill instantaneously, symptoms equal to those of the very worst plague, as in the case of the priest and soldier above mentioned. ”

“ An influenza pneumonia may show the general prostration and cardiac weakness of plague. In influenza pneumonia we have an onset with the features of ordinary influenza, which, however, in the influenza epidemic in 1918 was often short. In plague pneumonia we have pneumonia from the start. The pulse in plague is early weak and rapid and the tendency to a stuporous state more marked. The early appearance of thin watery sputum, which quickly becomes blood-tinged and always contains plague bacilli is noted in plague pneumonia. ”

“ Mass attack.—Another argument formerly raised against the contagious character was the claim that it broke out in mass attack, and large numbers became ill on the same day without the occurrence of isolated antecedent cases. The first cases of such epidemic diseases as the plague and small pox became a matter of record because of the accompanying high mortality, while in influenza, with its relatively low death rate the record usually begins only after a comparatively large mass of individuals have been attacked. ”

“ If we start from the time when more or less accurate descriptions enable us to determine the nature of the epidemics, we find that plague and typhus fever were the two diseases which, until a few decades ago, most commonly attacked the soldiers; the latter disease, which made its appearance in almost every war that was waged between the beginning of the sixteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century, consequently acquired the name ‘war-plague’. ”

“ Epidemics of many kinds, typhus, ague, plague—all diseases which were caused more or less by bad air—devastated this land and Europe in those days with a horrible intensity, to which even the choleras of our times are mild. The back streets, the hospitals, the gaols, the barracks, the camps—every place in which any large number of persons congregated, were so many nests of pestilence, engendered by uncleanliness, which denied alike the water which was drunk and the air which was breathed ”

“ Some persons are of opinion, that the air must be infected, and that it is the principal cause of these plagues; whereas I presume, that the ambient air is not otherwise concerned, than as the vehicle, which conveys the venomous particles from one body into another, at least in such plagues, as I have seen hitherto at Smyrna and Constantinople; allowing always, that the different constitution of the air contributes very much to propagate the plague: for the hot air dilates and renders more volatile and active the venemous steams, whereas cold air contracts and mortifies them. ”

“ It is incredible that the smell of putrid human blood in a vial should produce the dysentery. Why should this be more incredible than that smelling to a charged vial should ensure an electric shock to the person who did so? This is entirely a question respecting a matter of fact, not of speculation. The same is the case with the rest. It is not more incredible that, if the infection of the plague was in a trunk, a man should get the plague by putting his hand in it, than that he should be burnt if he put his hand into a trunk full of hot ashes. ”

“ There is still a good deal of uncertainty as to just what the distribution of the germs which takes place in the secondary period foreshadows in the way of prospects for trouble when we come to the tertiary period. It may well be that the man who had many germs in his skin and a blazing eruption when he was in the second stage, may have all his trouble in the skin when he comes to the late stage. ”

“ That towards the end of this disease the blood should begin to absorb the heat which it had before thrown out, is not wonderful. A tendency to dissolution very probably does in all cases take place in a greater or lesser degree; but we have not any reason to suppose that in the true plague hæmorrhages ever are as frequent, violent, or attended with such an apparent tendency to putrefaction, as in the yellow fever, and consequently we must suppose that there is some specific difference between the state of the blood in the one disease and in the other. ”

“ If we suppose the plague, or any other epidemic disease, to arise from some general cause, let that cause be contagion or any thing else, it ought to operate upon all who come within its sphere of action, as Dr. Mosely observes of infection. If experience shows that it does not, the argument will hold equally against a constitution of the atmosphere, putrid effluvia, heat, cold, or any thing else ”

“ During this comparatively brief period, the labour of which, until within a century, has had no systematic direction, the changes for good that have been effected are amongst the most startling of historical facts. Pestilences which decimated populations, and which, like the great plague of London, destroyed 7,165 people in a single week, have lost their virulency; gaol fever has disappeared, and our gaols, once each a plague-spot, have become, by a strange perversion of civilisation, the health spots of, at least, one kingdom. The term, Black Death, is heard no more ”