The medical faculty of Paris, the most celebrated of the
fourteenth century, were commissioned to deliver their opinion on
the causes of the Black Plague, and to furnish some appropriate
regulations with regard to living during its prevalence. This
document is sufficiently remarkable to find a place here.

"We, the Members of the College of Physicians of Paris, have,
after mature consideration and consultation on the present
mortality, collected the advice of our old masters in the art, and
intend to make known the causes of this pestilence more clearly
than could be done according to the rules and principles of
astrology and natural science; we, therefore, declare as follows:-

"It is known that in India and the vicinity of the Great Sea, the
constellations which combated the rays of the sun, and the warmth
of the heavenly fire, exerted their power especially against that
sea, and struggled violently with its waters. (Hence vapours
often originate which envelop the sun, and convert his light into
darkness.) These vapours alternately rose and fell for twenty-
eight days; but, at last, sun and fire acted so powerfully upon
the sea that they attracted a great portion of it to themselves,
and the waters of the ocean arose in the form of vapour; thereby
the waters were in some parts so corrupted that the fish which
they contained died. These corrupted waters, however, the heat of
the sun could not consume, neither could other wholesome water,
hail or snow and dew, originate therefrom. On the contrary, this
vapour spread itself through the air in many places on the earth,
and enveloped them in fog.

"Such was the case all over Arabia, in a part of India, in Crete,