These facts are sufficient plainly to prove that the course of the year 1551 was unusual, that the atmosphere was overcharged with water, and that the electrical conditions of it were considerably disturbed; nor must we omit to notice that, for the first time since 1547, mould spots again appeared in Germany on clothes, and red discolorations of water, as likewise an exuberance of the lowest cryptogamic species of vegetation[763].
During the years of scarcity, from 1528 to 1534, it excited general surprise that malignant fevers, more especially the plague, petechial fever, and encephalitis, which in the individual accounts we can seldom sufficiently distinguish from each other, were constantly recurring, and, creeping slowly as they did from place to place, had no sooner finished their wandering visitations of whole districts of country, than they again made their appearance where they had broken out in former years[764]. It was _a century of putrid malignant affections_, in which typhous diseases were continually prevailing—a century replete with grand phenomena affecting human life in general, and continuing so, long after the period to which our researches refer.
There existed also an epidemic flux which, during a cold summer[765] in 1538, spread over a great part of Europe, and especially over France, so that, according to the assurance of an eminent physician, there was scarcely any town exempt from it[766]. Of this flux we have unfortunately but very defective reports, among which we find a statement, not without importance, that there were no extraordinary forerunners, such as are observed in phenomena of this kind, to account for this epidemic[767]. Two years earlier, however, (12th of July 1536,) Erasmus died of the flux[768]. This disease seldom occurs sporadically, but usually as an epidemic, and thus, perhaps slighter visitations of this rheumatic malady may be assumed to have preceded that greater one which took place in 1538.
A period remarkable for plague followed in the year 1540, and ended about 1543. The summer of the first named year is especially mentioned in the chronicles as having been _hot_, and throughout the whole century it continued to be in great repute on account of the excellent wine it produced[769]. A spontaneous conflagration of the woods was frequent, and an earthquake was felt in Germany on the 14th of December[770]. Thereupon, in 1541, there followed in Constantinople a great plague[771] which, in the year 1542, spread by means of a Turkish invasion into Hungary, its superior importance being indicated by the presence of accompanying phenomena, among which the swarms of locusts that appeared this year are especially worthy of note. They came from the interior of Asia, and travelled in dense masses over Europe, passing northward over the Elbe[772], and southward as far as Spain[773]. Kaye saw a cloud of locusts of this description in Padua; their passage lasted full two hours, and they extended further than the eye could reach[774]. The plague quickly spread in Hungary and caused a similar destruction to the imperial army, which was fighting against the Turks under Joachim the Second, Elector of Brandenburg, as it had formerly caused the French before Naples[775]. Whether this pestilence may have been the original oriental glandular plague, or whether we may assume that it had already degenerated into the _Hungarian Petechial Fever_, such as likewise broke out in the year 1566, in the camp near Komorn, during the campaign of Maximilian the Second, and thence, by means of the disbanded lansquenets, spread in all directions[776], cannot now well be determined for want of ascertained facts. In the following year, 1543, however, this plague broke out in Germany, namely, in the Harz districts in the provinces of the Saale[777], and still more malignantly at Metz[778], yet upon the whole it did not cause any considerable loss of life.