Add to which, the usual propagation of the plague
through clothes, beds, and a thousand other things to which the
pestilential poison adheres--a propagation which, from want of
caution, must have been infinitely multiplied; and since articles
of this kind, removed from the access of air, not only retain the
matter of contagion for an indefinite period, but also increase
its activity and engender it like a living being, frightful ill-
consequences followed for many years after the first fury of the
pestilence was past.
The affection of the stomach, often mentioned in vague terms, and
occasionally as a vomiting of blood, was doubtless only a
subordinate symptom, even if it be admitted that actual
hematemesis did occur. For the difficulty of distinguishing a
flow of blood from the stomach, from a pulmonic expectoration of
that fluid, is, to non-medical men, even in common cases, not
inconsiderable. How much greater then must it have been in so
terrible a disease, where assistants could not venture to approach
the sick without exposing themselves to certain death? Only two
medical descriptions of the malady have reached us, the one by the
brave Guy de Chauliac, the other by Raymond Chalin de Vinario, a
very experienced scholar, who was well versed in the learning of
the time.
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