[The Black Death and The Dancing Mania by Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker]@TWC D-Link book
The Black Death and The Dancing Mania

CHAPTER III--CAUSES--SPREAD
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Naples, Rome, Pisa, Bologna, Padua, Venice, and many other cities, suffered considerably; whole villages were swallowed up.

Castles, houses, and churches were overthrown, and hundreds of people were buried beneath their ruins.

In Carinthia, thirty villages, together with all the churches, were demolished; more than a thousand corpses were drawn out of the rubbish; the city of Villach was so completely destroyed that very few of its inhabitants were saved; and when the earth ceased to tremble it was found that mountains had been moved from their positions, and that many hamlets were left in ruins.

It is recorded that during this earthquake the wine in the casks became turbid, a statement which may be considered as furnishing proof that changes causing a decomposition of the atmosphere had taken place; but if we had no other information from which the excitement of conflicting powers of nature during these commotions might be inferred, yet scientific observations in modern times have shown that the relation of the atmosphere to the earth is changed by volcanic influences.

Why then, may we not, from this fact, draw retrospective inferences respecting those extraordinary phenomena?
Independently of this, however, we know that during this earthquake, the duration of which is stated by some to have been a week, and by others a fortnight, people experienced an unusual stupor and headache, and that many fainted away.
These destructive earthquakes extended as far as the neighbourhood of Basle, and recurred until the year 1360 throughout Germany, France, Silesia, Poland, England, and Denmark, and much further north.
Great and extraordinary meteors appeared in many places, and were regarded with superstitious horror.


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