completely convinced. He sought to protect himself against it by
the usual means; and it was probably he who advised Pope Clement
VI. to shut himself up while the plague lasted. The preservation
of this Pope's life, however, was most beneficial to the city of
Avignon, for he loaded the poor with judicious acts of kindness,
took care to have proper attendants provided, and paid physicians
himself to afford assistance wherever human aid could avail--an
advantage which, perhaps, no other city enjoyed. Nor was the
treatment of plague-patients in Avignon by any means
objectionable; for, after the usual depletions by bleeding and
aperients, where circumstances required them, they endeavoured to
bring the buboes to suppuration; they made incisions into the
inflammatory boils, or burned them with a red-hot iron, a practice
which at all times proves salutary, and in the Black Plague saved
many lives. In this city, the Jews, who lived in a state of the
greatest filth, were most severely visited, as also the Spaniards,
whom Chalin accuses of great intemperance.

Still more distinct notions on the causes of the plague were
stated to his contemporaries in the fourteenth century by Galeazzo
di Santa Sofia, a learned man, a native of Padua, who likewise
treated plague-patients at Vienna, though in what year is
undetermined. He distinguishes carefully PESTILENCE from EPIDEMY
and ENDEMY. The common notion of the two first accords exactly
with that of an epidemic constitution, for both consist, according
to him, in an unknown change or corruption of the air; with this
difference, that pestilence calls forth diseases of different
kinds; epidemy, on the contrary, always the same disease. As an
example of an epidemy, he adduces a cough (influenza) which was
observed in all climates at the same time without perceptible