A History Of Epidemics In Britain

The period covered by this long list is itself a long one; and the intervals between successive famine-pestilences are sometimes more than a generation. A history of epidemics is necessarily a morbid history. In this chapter of it, we search out the lean years, saying nothing of the fat years; and by exclusively dwelling upon the dark side we may form an entirely wrong opinion of the comforts or hardships, prosperity or adversity, of these remote times. English writers of the earliest period, when they use generalities, are loud in praise of the advantages of their own island; until we come to the fourteenth century poem of 'The Vision of Piers the Ploughman' we should hardly suspect, from their usual strain, that England was other than an earthly paradise, and every village an Auburn, "where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain.