llection of the eventful year of the "Great
Mortality," that before the close of the fourteenth century, ere the ill
effects of the Black Plague had ceased, nations endeavoured to guard
against the return of this enemy by an earnest and effectual defence.

The first regulation which was issued for this purpose, originated with
Viscount Bernabo, and is dated the 17th January, 1374. "Every plague-
patient was to be taken out of the city into the fields, there to die or
to recover. Those who attended upon a plague-patient, were to remain
apart for ten days before they again associated with anybody. The
priests were to examine the diseased, and point out to special
commissioners the persons infected, under punishment of the confiscation
of their goods and of being burned alive. Whoever imported the plague,
the state condemned his goods to confiscation. Finally, none except
those who were appointed for that purpose were to attend plague-patients,
under penalty of death and confiscation."

These orders, in correspondence with the spirit of the fourteenth
century, are sufficiently decided to indicate a recollection of the good
effects of confinement, and of keeping at a distance those suspected of
having plague. It was said that Milan itself, by a rigorous barricade of
three houses in which the plague had broken out, maintained itself free
from the "Great Mortality" for a considerable time; and examples of the
preservation of individual families, by means of a strict separation,
were certainly very frequent. That these orders must have caused
universal affliction from their uncommon severity, as we know to have
been especially the case in the city of Reggio, may be easily conceived;
but Bernabo did not suffer himself to be deterred from his purpose by
fear--on the contrary, when the plague returned in the year 1383, he
forbade the admission of people from infected places into his territories
on pain of death. We have now, it is true, no account how far he
succeeded; yet it is to be supposed that he arrested the disease, for it
had long lost the property of the Black Death, to spread abroad in the
air the contagious matter which proceeded from the lungs, charged with
putridity, and to taint the atmosphere of whole cities by the vast
numbers of the sick. Now that it had resumed its milder form, so that it
infected only by contact, it admitted being confined within individual
dwellings, as easily as in modern times.

B