Villages and towns were in many places utterly deserted, no living
things being left, for the disease was as fatal to dogs, cats, and swine
as to men. There is reason to believe that this, and other less
destructive visitations of plague, were due to the action of some of
those bacterial organisms which are now known to have so much to do with
infectious diseases. This particular pestilence-breeder seems to have
flourished in filth, and the streets of the cities of Europe of that day
formed a richly fertile soil for its growth. Men prayed to God for
relief, instead of cleaning their highways and by-ways, and relief came
not.
Such was its character, what were its ravages? Never before or since has
a pestilence brought such desolation. Men died by millions. At Basle it
found fourteen thousand victims; at Strasburg and Erfurt, sixteen
thousand; in the other cities of Germany it flourished in like
proportion. In Osnabrueck only seven married couples remained unseparated
by death. Of the Franciscan Minorites of Germany, one hundred and
twenty-five thousand died.
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