Author : RICHARD PANKHURST
Clemente da Terzorio, describing
the situation at Harar, writes for example of large numbers
of flies which after sucking the putrifying matter of corpses
then landed on the living.178 The eating of decaying and other
impure food may also be presumed to have had effects very
detrimental to health. The result was that smallpox, typhus,
cholera, and dysentery made their appearance in many parts of the
country and carried off large numbers of people.179 Wurtz relates
that the incidence of smallpox in particular was greater than
ever before, and adds: "people died in masses;