Note 311 — BOOK XIV.

This disease was the scurvy; “it was such,” says Joinville, “that the flesh of our legs dried away to the bone, and our skins became of a black or earth colour, like an old saddle which has been a long time laid aside: and besides this, we who were afflicted by this disease were soon subjected to another persecution, in a complaint of the mouth, which arose from our having eaten of those fish; it putrified the flesh of the gums, so that it rendered the breath horribly stinking.” Joinville here speaks of the burbotte, a fish of the Nile, which is a voracious fish, and feeds upon dead bodies. The seneschal adds, in another passage of his memoirs, “that the malady having seized upon the army, it became necessary for the barbers to cut out the swollen flesh of the gums of all who were afflicted with this disease, so that they could not eat. Great pity was it to hear all from whom this dead flesh had been cut, going about in the army, crying and moaning. They appeared to me like poor women who are in labour with their children when they come upon earth: nobody can tell how pitiable that sight was.”