Black Death
THE, one of the most memorable of the epidemics of the Middle Ages, was a great pestilence in the 14th century; which devastated Asia, Europe, BLACKFISH and Africa. It was an Oriental plague, marked by inflammatory boils and tumors of the glands. On account of these boils, and from the black spots which appeared upon the skin, it has been generally called the black death. In England the plague first broke 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. From England the contagion was carried by a ship to Norway, where the plague broke out in its most frightful form.
The whole period of time during which the black death raged with destructive violence in Europe was (with the exception of Russia, where it did not break out until 1351) from 1347 to 1350. Ireland was much less heavily visited than England, and Scotland, too, would perhaps have remained free from it had not the Scotch availed themselves of the discomfiture of the English to make an irruption into England, which terminated in the destruction of their army and the extension of the pestilence through those who escaped over the whole country.
It may be assumed that Europe lost by the black death some 25,000,000 of people. See BUBONIC PLAGUE.