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
cause; but he recognised the approach of a pestilence,
independently of unusual natural phenomena, by the more frequent
occurrence of various kinds of fever, to which the modern
physicians would assign a nervous and putrid character.
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