[The Black Death and The Dancing Mania by Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker]@TWC D-Link bookThe Black Death and The Dancing Mania CHAPTER III--CAUSES--SPREAD 12/12
A milder and a more malignant form certainly existed, and the former was not always derived from the latter, as is to be supposed from this circumstance--that the spitting of blood, the infallible diagnostic of the latter, on the first breaking out of the plague, is not similarly mentioned in all the reports; and it is therefore probable that the milder form belonged to the native plague--the more malignant, to that introduced by contagion. Contagion was, however, in itself, only one of many causes which gave rise to the Black Plague. This disease was a consequence of violent commotions in the earth's organism--if any disease of cosmical origin can be so considered.
One spring set a thousand others in motion for the annihilation of living beings, transient or permanent, of mediate or immediate effect.
The most powerful of all was contagion; for in the most distant countries, which had scarcely yet heard the echo of the first concussion, the people fell a sacrifice to organic poison--the untimely offspring of vital energies thrown into violent commotion..
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