STRUGGLING TO UNDERSTAND

“Changes of the seasons are a great source of plagues. For the Ancients, and especially Hippocrates, are agreed that if any of the four seasons was disrupted so that the seasons did not observe their regularity, pestilence and deadly diseases would come to pass that year.”

- Consultation of the Medical Faculty of the University of Paris. 6 October 1348. Aberth, Source 24

“It is clear and obvious that it is the nature of the disease to spread and contaminate the surroundings. Both experience and observation confirm this. It has not happened yet that a healthy person came into contact with a sick one without the disease. It is a law which God has imposed in this matter…The best thing e learn from extensive experience is that if someone comes into contact with a diseased person, he immediately is smitten with the same disease, with identical symptoms. If the first person vomited blood, the other one does too.”

- Abū JacFar Ahmad Ibn Khātima, Description and Remedy for Escaping the Plague (February 1349). Aberth, Source 28

The Medieval Science of the Black Death

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Consultation of the Medical Faculty of the University of Paris, 6 October 1348. Aberth, Source 9