of
Tours, (tom. ii. l. iv. c. 5, p 205,) who styles it Lues Inguinaria, and
the Chronicles of Victor Tunnunensis, (p. 9, in Thesaur. Temporum,) of
Marcellinus, (p. 54,) and of Theophanes, (p. 153.)]

[Footnote 89: Dr. Friend (Hist. Medicin. in Opp. p. 416--420, Lond.
1733) is satisfied that Procopius must have studied physic, from his
knowledge and use of the technical words. Yet many words that are now
scientific were common and popular in the Greek idiom.]

[Footnote 90: See Thucydides, l. ii. c. 47--54, p. 127--133, edit.
Duker, and the poetical description of the same plague by Lucretius.
(l. vi. 1136--1284.) I was indebted to Dr. Hunter for an elaborate
commentary on this part of Thucydides, a quarto of 600 pages, (Venet.
1603, apud Juntas,) which was pronounced in St. Mark's Library by Fabius
Paullinus Utinensis, a physician and philosopher.]

[Footnote 91: Thucydides (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.]

[Footnote 92: It was thus that Socrates had been saved by his
temperance, in the plague of Athens, (Aul. Gellius, Noct. Attic. ii. l.)
Dr. Mead accounts for the peculiar salubrity of religious houses, by the
two advantages of seclusion and abstinence, (p. 18, 19.)]

Contagion is the inseparable symptom of the plague; which, by mutual
respiration, is transfused from the infected persons to the lungs and
stomach of those who approach them. While philosophers believe and
tremble, it is singular, that the existence of a real danger should have
been denied by a people most prone to vain and imaginary terrors. [93]
Yet the fellow-citizens of Procopius were satisfied, by some short
and partial experience, that the infection could not be gained by
the closest conversation: [94] and this persuasion might support the
assiduity of friends or physicians in the care of the sick, whom inhuman
prudence would have condemned to solitude and despair. But the fatal
security, like the predestination of the Turks, must have aided the
progress of the contagion; and those salutary precautions to which
Europe is indebted for her safety, were unknown to the government
of Justinian. No