Thus did the plague spread over England with unexampled rapidity,
after it had first broken out in the county of Dorset, whence it
advanced through the counties of Devon and Somerset, to Bristol,
and thence reached Gloucester, Oxford and London. Probably few
places escaped, perhaps not any; for the annuals of contemporaries
report that throughout the land only a tenth part of the
inhabitants remained alive.
From England the contagion was carried by a ship to Bergen, the
capital of Norway, where the plague then broke out in its most
frightful form, with vomiting of blood; and throughout the whole
country, spared not more than a third of the inhabitants. The
sailors found no refuge in their ships; and vessels were often
seen driving about on the ocean and drifting on shore, whose crews
had perished to the last man.
In Poland the affected were attacked with spitting blood, and died
in a few days in such vast numbers, that, as it has been affirmed,
scarcely a fourth of the inhabitants were left.
Finally, in Russia the plague appeared two years later than in
Southern Europe; yet here again, with the same symptoms as
elsewhere. Russian contemporaries have recorded that it began
with rigor, heat, and darting pain in the shoulders and back; that
it was accompanied by spitting of blood, and terminated fatally in
two, or at most three days.
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