chap, xliii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 467 visions of a distempered fancy, and the victim despaired as soon as he had heard the menace and felt the stroke of an invisible spectre. Bat the greater number, in their beds, in the streets, in their usual occupation, were surprised by a slight fever; so slight, indeed, that neither the pulse nor the colour of the patient gave any signs of the approaching danger. The same, the next, or the succeeding day, it was declared by the swelling of the glands, particularly those of the groin, of the arm-pits, and under the ear ; and, when these buboes or tumours were opened, they were found to contain a coal, or black substance, of the size of a lentil. If they came to a just swelling and suppuration, the patient was saved by this kind and natural discharge of the morbid humour. But, if they continued hard and dry, a morti- fication quickly ensued, and the fifth day was commonly the term of his life. The fever was often accompanied with lethargy or delirium; the bodies of the sick were covered with black pustules or carbuncles, the symptoms of immediate death ; and, in the constitutions too feeble to produce an eruption, the vomit- ing of blood was followed by a mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was generally mortal ; yet one infant was drawn alive from his dead mother, and three mothers survived the loss of their infected foetus. Youth was the most perilous season, and the female sex was less susceptible than the male; but every rank and profession was attacked with indis- criminate rage, and many of those who escaped were deprived of the use of their speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder. 131 The physicians of Constantinople were zealous and skilful, but their art was battled by the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the disease ; the same remedies were productive of contrary effects, and the event capriciously disap- pointed their prognostics of death or recovery. The order of funerals and the right of sepulchres were confounded ; those who were left without friends or servants lay unburied in the streets or in their desolate houses ; and a magistrate was authorised to collect the promiscuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land or water, and to inter them in deep 131 Thuoydides (c. 51) affirms that the infection could only be once taken ; but Evagrius, who had family experience of the plague, observes that some persons who had escaped the first, sunk under the second, attack ; and this repetition is confirmed by Fabius Paullinus (p. 588). I observe that on this head physicians are divided ; and the nature and operation of the disease may not always be similar.
