ose who were
attending them were in a state of constant exhaustion and had a most
difficult time of it throughout. For this reason everybody pitied them
no less than the sufferers, not because they were threatened by the
pestilence in going near it (for neither physicians nor other persons
were found to contract this malady through contact with the sick or with
the dead, for many who were constantly engaged either in burying or in
attending those in no way connected with them held out in the
performance of this service beyond all expectation, while with many
others the disease came on without warning and they died straightway);
but they pitied them because of the great hardships which they were
undergoing. For when the patients fell from their beds and lay rolling
upon the floor, they, kept patting them back in place, and when they
were struggling to rush headlong out of their houses, they would force
them back by shoving and pulling against them. And when water chanced to
be near, they wished to fall into it, not so much because of a desire
for drink (for the most of them rushed into the sea), but the cause was
to be found chiefly in the diseased state of their minds. They had also
great difficulty in the matter of eating, for they could not easily take
food. And many perished through lack of any man to care for them, for
they were either overcome by hunger, or threw themselves down from a
height. And in those cases where neither coma nor delirium came on, the
bubonic swelling became mortified and the sufferer, no longer able to
endure the pain, died. And one would suppose that in all cases the same
thing would have been true, but since they were not at all in their
senses, some were quite unable to feel the pain; for owing to the
troubled condition of their minds they lost all sense of feeling.

Now some of the physicians who were at a loss because the symptoms were
not understood, supposing that the disease centred in the bubonic
swellings, decided to investigate the bodies of the dead. And upon
opening some of the swellings, they found a strange sort of carbuncle
that had grown inside them.

Death came in some cases immediately, in others after many days; and
with some the body broke out with black pustules about as large as a
lentil and these did not survive even one day, but all succumbed
immediately. With many also a vomiting of blood ensued without visible
cause and straightway brought death. Moreover I am able