The Black Death and The Dancing Mania

INTRODUCTION

Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker was one of three generations of
distinguished professors of medicine.  His father, August
Friedrich Hecker, a most industrious writer, first practised as a
physician in Frankenhausen, and in 1790 was appointed Professor of
Medicine at the University of Erfurt.  In 1805 he was called to
the like professorship at the University of Berlin.  He died at
Berlin in 1811.

Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker was born at Erfurt in January, 1795.
He went, of course--being then ten years old--with his father to
Berlin in 1805, studied at Berlin in the Gymnasium and University,
but interrupted his studies at the age of eighteen to fight as a
volunteer in the war for a renunciation of Napoleon and all his
works.  After Waterloo he went back to his studies, took his
doctor's degree in 1817 with a treatise on the "Antiquities of
Hydrocephalus," and became privat-docent in the Medical Faculty of
the Berlin University.  His inclination was strong from the first
towards the historical side of inquiries into Medicine.  This
caused him to undertake a "History of Medicine," of which the
first volume appeared in 1822.  It obtained rank for him at Berlin
as Extraordinary Professor of the History of Medicine.  This
office was changed into an Ordinary professorship of the same
study in 1834, and Hecker held that office until his death in
1850.

The office was created for a man who had a special genius for this
form of study.  It was delightful to himself, and he made it
delightful to others.  He is regarded as the founder of historical
pathology.  He studied disease in relation to the history of man,
made his study yield to men outside his own profession an
important chapter in the history of civilisation, and even took
into account physical phenomena upon the surface of the globe as
often affecting the movement and character of epidemics.

The account of "The Black Death" here translated by Dr. Babington
was Hecker's first important work of this kind.  It was published
in 1832, and was followed in the same year by his account of "The
Dancing Mania."  The books here given are the two that first gave
Hecker a wide reputation.  Many other such treatises followed,
among them, in 1865, a treatise on the "Great Epidemics of the
Middle Ages."  Besides his "History of Medicine," which, in its
second volume, reached into the fourteenth century, and all his
smaller treatises, Hecker wrote a large number of articles in
Encyclopaedias and Medical Journals.  Professor J.F.K. Hecker was,
in a more interesting way, as busy as Professor A.F. Hecker, his
father, had been.  He transmitted the family energies to an only
son, Karl von Hecker, born in 1827, who distinguished himself
greatly as a Professor of Midwifery, and died in 1882.

Benjamin Guy Babington, the translator of these books of Hecker's,
belonged also to a family in which the study of Medicine has
passed from father to son, and both have been writers.  B.G.
Babington was the son of Dr. William Babington, who was physician
to Guy's Hospital for some years before 1811, when the extent of
his private practice caused him to retire.  He died in 1833.  His
son, Benjamin Guy Babington, was educated at the Charterhouse, saw
service as a midshipman, served for seven years in India, returned
to England, graduated as physician at Cambridge in 1831.  He
distinguished himself by inquiries into the cholera epidemic in
1832, and translated these pieces of Hecker's in 1833, for
publication by the Sydenham Society.  He afterwards translated
Hecker's other treatises on epidemics of the Middle Ages.  Dr.
B.G. Babington was Physician to Guy's Hospital from 1840 to 1855,
and was a member of the Medical Council of the General Board of
Health.  He died on the 8th of April, 1866.

H.M.

THE BLACK DEATH

CHAPTER I--GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

That Omnipotence which has called the world with all its living
creatures into one animated being, especially reveals Himself in
the desolation of great pestilences.  The powers of creation come
into violent collision; the sultry dryness of the atmosphere; the
subterraneous thunders; the mist of overflowing waters, are the
harbingers of destruction.  Nature is not satisfied with the
ordinary alternations of life and death, and the destroying angel
waves over man and beast his flaming sword.

These revolutions are performed in vast cycles, which the spirit
of man, limited, as it is, to a narrow circle of perception, is
unable to explore.  They are, however, greater terrestrial events
than any of those which proceed from the discord, the distress, or
the passions of nations.  By annihilations they awaken new life;
and when the tumult above and below the earth is past, nature is
renovated, and the mind awakens from torpor and depression to the
consciousness of an intellectual existence.

Were it in any degree within the power of human research to draw
up, in a vivid and connected form, an historical sketch of such
mighty events, after the manner of the historians of wars and
battles, and the migrations of nations, we might then arrive at
clear views with respect to the mental development of the human
race, and the ways of Providence would be more plainly
discernible.  It would then be demonstrable, that the mind of
nations is deeply affected by the destructive conflict of the
powers of nature, and that great disasters lead to striking
changes in general civilisation.  For all that exists in man,
whether good or evil, is rendered conspicuous by the presence of
great danger.  His inmost feelings are roused--the thought of
self-preservation masters his spirit--self-denial is put to severe
proof, and wherever darkness and barbarism prevail, there the
affrighted mortal flies to the idols of his superstition, and all
laws, human and divine, are criminally violated.

In conformity with a general law of nature, such a state of
excitement brings about a change, beneficial or detrimental,
according to circumstances, so that nations either attain a higher
degree of moral worth, or sink deeper in ignorance and vice.  All
this, however, takes place upon a much grander scale than through
the ordinary vicissitudes of war and peace, or the rise and fall
of empires, because the powers of nature themselves produce
plagues, and subjugate the human will, which, in the contentions
of nations, alone predominates.

CHAPTER II--THE DISEASE

The most memorable example of what has been advanced is afforded
by a great pestilence of the fourteenth century, which desolated
Asia, Europe, and Africa, and of which the people yet preserve the
remembrance in gloomy traditions.  It was an oriental plague,
marked by inflammatory boils and tumours of the glands, such as
break out in no other febrile disease.  On account of these
inflammatory boils, and from the black spots, indicatory of a
putrid decomposition, which appeared upon the skin, it was called
in Germany and in the northern kingdoms of Europe the Black Death,
and in Italy, la mortalega grande, the Great Mortality.

Few testimonies are presented to us respecting its symptoms and
its course, yet these are sufficient to throw light upon the form
of the malady, and they are worthy of credence, from their
coincidence with the signs of the same disease in modern times.

The imperial writer, Kantakusenos, whose own son, Andronikus, died
of this plague in Constantinople, notices great imposthumes of the
thighs and arms of those affected, which, when opened, afforded
relief by the discharge of an offensive matter.  Buboes, which are
the infallible signs of the oriental plague, are thus plainly
indicated, for he makes separate mention of smaller boils on the
arms and in the face, as also in other parts of the body, and
clearly distinguishes these from the blisters, which are no less
produced by plague in all its forms.  In many cases, black spots
broke out all over the body, either single, or united and
confluent.

These symptoms were not all found in every case.  In many, one
alone was sufficient to cause death, while some patients
recovered, contrary to expectation, though afflicted with all.
Symptoms of cephalic affection were frequent; many patients became
stupefied and fell into a deep sleep, losing also their speech
from palsy of the tongue; others remained sleepless and without
rest.  The fauces and tongue were black, and as if suffused with
blood; no beverage could assuage their burning thirst, so that
their sufferings continued without alleviation until terminated by
death, which many in their despair accelerated with their own
hands.  Contagion was evident, for attendants caught the disease
of their relations and friends, and many houses in the capital
were bereft even of their last inhabitant.  Thus far the ordinary
circumstances only of the oriental plague occurred.  Still deeper
sufferings, however, were connected with this pestilence, such as
have not been felt at other times; the organs of respiration were
seized with a putrid inflammation; a violent pain in the chest
attacked the patient; blood was expectorated, and the breath
diffused a pestiferous odour.

In the West, the following were the predominating symptoms on the
eruption of this disease.  An ardent fever, accompanied by an
evacuation of blood, proved fatal in the first three days.  It
appears that buboes and inflammatory boils did not at first come
out at all, but that the disease, in the form of carbuncular
(anthrax-artigen) affection of the lungs, effected the destruction
of life before the other symptoms were developed.

Thus did the plague rage in Avignon for six or eight weeks, and
the pestilential breath of the sick, who expectorated blood,
caused a terrible contagion far and near; for even the vicinity of
those who had fallen ill of plague was certain death; so that
parents abandoned their infected children, and all the ties of
kindred were dissolved.  After this period, buboes in the axilla
and in the groin, and inflammatory boils all over the body, made
their appearance; but it was not until seven months afterwards
that some patients recovered with matured buboes, as in the
ordinary milder form of plague.

Such is the report of the courageous Guy de Chauliac, who
vindicated the honour of medicine, by bidding defiance to danger;
boldly and constantly assisting the affected, and disdaining the
excuse of his colleagues, who held the Arabian notion, that
medical aid was unavailing, and that the contagion justified
flight.  He saw the plague twice in Avignon, first in the year
1348, from January to August, and then twelve years later, in the
autumn, when it returned from Germany, and for nine months spread