Note 61 — Chapter IV

The Black Death (πανούκλα) was the terrible disease which spread throughout Europe and depopulated most of its large cities between 1346 and 1370. Cantacuzenus, whose son Andronicus fell a victim, gives a vivid and terrible picture of its symptoms, and of its effect upon the population (iv. 8). Dr. Mordtmann, who is not merely distinguished as an archæologist well acquainted with the Byzantine writers, but as a physician of great experience, believes it to have been a black form of smallpox, and not what is usually known as plague, and a well-known specialist in plague, to whose attention I have submitted the account of Cantacuzenus, is disposed to accept the same view.