. But 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 armpits, 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
first 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 mortification 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 vomiting 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 its 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 indiscriminate
rage, and many of those who escaped were deprived of their speech,
without being secure from a return of the disorder. The physicians of
Constantinople were zealous and skilful, but their art was baffled by
the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the disease; the same
remedies were productive of contrary effects and the event capriciously
disappointed 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 authorized to collect the
promiscuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land or water,
and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the city.... No
facts have been preserved to sustain an account, or even a conjecture,
of the number that perished in this extraordinary mortality. I only
find, that during three months 5,000, and at length 10,000, persons died
each day at Constantinople; that many cities of the East were left
vacant, and that in several districts of