I need help to write my discussion post, please write 300 words

I say, then, that the years [of the era] of the fruitful Incarnation of the Son of

God had attained to the number of one thousand three hundred and forty-eight,

when into the notable city of Florence, fair over every other of Italy, there came

the death-dealing pestilence, which, through the operation of the heavenly

bodies or of our own iniquitous dealings, being sent down upon mankind for

our correction by the just wrath of God, had some years before appeared in the

parts of the East and after having bereft these latter of an innumerable number

of inhabitants, extending without cease from one place to another, had now

unhappily spread towards the West. And there against no wisdom availing nor

human foresight (whereby the city was purged of many impurities by officers

deputed to that end and it was forbidden unto any sick person to enter therein

and many were the counsels given for the preservation of health) nor yet

humble supplications, not once but many times both in ordered processions and

on other wise made unto God by devout persons,—about the coming in of the

Spring of the aforesaid year, it began on horrible and miraculous wise to show

forth its dolorous effects. Yet not as it had done in the East, where, if any bled

at the nose, it was a manifest sign of inevitable death; nay, but in men and

women alike there appeared, at the beginning of the malady, certain swellings,

either on the groin or under the armpits, whereof some waxed of the bigness of

a common apple, others like unto an egg, some more and some less, and these

the vulgar named plague-boils. From these two parts the aforesaid death-

bearing plague-boils proceeded, in brief space, to appear and come indifferently

in every part of the body; wherefrom, after awhile, the fashion of the contagion

began to change into black or livid blotches, which showed themselves in many

[first] on the arms and about the thighs and [after spread to] every other part of

the person, in some large and sparse and in others small and thick-sown; and

like as the plague-boils had been first (and yet were) a very certain token of

coming death, even so were these for everyone to whom they came.

To the cure of these maladies nor counsel of physician nor virtue of any

medicine appeared to avail or profit aught; on the contrary,—whether it was

that the nature of the infection suffered it not or that the ignorance of the

physicians (of whom, over and above the men of art, the number, both men and

women, who had never had any teaching of medicine, was become exceeding

great) availed not to know whence it arose and consequently took not due

measures there against,—not only did few recover thereof, but well nigh all

died within the third day from the appearance of the aforesaid signs, this sooner

and that later, and for the most part without fever or other accident . . . I say,

then, that of such efficiency was the nature of the pestilence in question in

communicating itself from one to another, that, not only did it pass from man to

man, but this, which is much more, it many times visibly did;—to wit, a thing

which had pertained to a man sick or dead of the aforesaid sickness, being

touched by an animal foreign to the human species, not only infected this latter

with the plague, but in a very brief space of time killed it. . . .

From these things and many others like unto them or yet stranger divers fears

and conceits were begotten in those who abode alive, which well nigh all

tended to a very barbarous conclusion, namely, to shun and flee from the sick

and all that pertained to them, and thus doing, each thought to secure immunity

for himself. Some there were who conceived that to live moderately and keep

oneself from all excess was the best defense against such a danger; wherefore,

making up their company, they lived removed from every other and shut

themselves up in those houses where none had been sick and where living was

best; and there, using very temperately of the most delicate viands and the

finest wines and eschewing all incontinence, they abode with music and such

other diversions as they might have, never suffering themselves to speak with

any nor choosing to hear any news from without of death or sick folk. Others,

inclining to the contrary opinion, maintained that to carouse and make merry

and go about singing and frolicking and satisfy the appetite in everything

possible and laugh and scoff at whatsoever befell was a very certain remedy for

such an ill. That which they said they put in practice as best they might, going

about day and night, now to this tavern, now to that, drinking without stint or

measure; and on this wise they did yet more freely in other folk's houses, so but

they scented there aught that liked or tempted them, as they might lightly do,

for that every one—as he were to live no longer—had abandoned all care of his

possessions, as of himself, wherefore the most part of the houses were become

common good and strangers used them, whenas [i.e., when] they happened

upon them, like as the very owner might have done; and with all this bestial

preoccupation, they still shunned the sick to the best of their power.

In this sore affliction and misery of our city, the reverend authority of the laws,

both human and divine, was all in a manner dissolved and fallen into decay, for

[lack of] the ministers and executors thereof, who, like other men, were all

either dead or sick or else left so destitute of followers that they were unable to

exercise any office, wherefore everyone had license to do whatsoever pleased

him. Many others held a middle course between the two aforesaid, not

straitening themselves so exactly in the matter of diet as the first neither

allowing themselves such license in drinking and other debauchery as the

second, but using things in sufficiency, according to their appetites; nor did

they seclude themselves, but went about, carrying in their hands, some flowers,

some odoriferous herbs and other some divers kinds of spiceries [i.e., aromatic

drugs] which they set often to their noses, accounting it an excellent thing to

fortify the brain with such odors, more by token that the air seemed all heavy

and attainted with the stench of the dead bodies and that of the sick and of the

remedies used.

***

Indeed, leaving be that townsman avoided townsman and that well nigh no

neighbor took thought unto other and that kinsfolk seldom or never visited one

another and held no converse together save from afar, this tribulation had

stricken such terror to the hearts of all, men and women alike, that brother

forsook brother, uncle nephew and sister brother and oftentimes wife husband;

nay (what is yet more extraordinary and well nigh incredible) fathers and

mothers refused to visit or tend their very children, as they had not been theirs.

By reason whereof there remained unto those (and the number of them, both

males and females, was incalculable) who fell sick, none other succor than that

which they owed either to the charity of friends (and of these there were few)

or the greed of servants, who tended them, allured by high and extravagant

wage; albeit, for all this, these latter were not grown many, and those men and

women of mean understanding and for the most part unused to such offices,

who served for well nigh naught but to reach things called for by the sick or to

note when they died; and in the doing of these services many of them perished

with their gain.

***

Few, again, were they whose bodies were accompanied to the church by more

than half a score or a dozen of their neighbors, and of these no worshipful and

illustrious citizens, but a sort of blood-suckers, sprung from the dregs of the

people, who styled themselves pickmen [i.e., gravediggers] and did such offices

for hire, shouldered the bier and bore it with hurried steps, not to that church

which the dead man had chosen before his death, but most times to the nearest,

behind five or six priests, with little light [i.e., few candles] and whiles none at

all, which latter, with the aid of the said pickmen, thrust him into what grave

soever they first found unoccupied, without troubling themselves with too long

or too formal a service.

The condition of the common people (and belike, in great part, of the middle

class also) was yet more pitiable to behold, for that these, for the most part

retained by hope or poverty in their houses and abiding in their own quarters,

sickened by the thousand daily and being altogether untended and unsuccored,

died well nigh all without recourse. Many breathed their last in the open street,

whilst other many, for all they died in their houses, made it known to the

neighbors that they were dead rather by the stench of their rotting bodies than

otherwise; and of these and others who died all about the whole city was full.

***

Moreover. . . throughout the scattered villages and in the fields, the poor and

miserable husbandmen and their families, without succor of physician or aid of

servitor, died, not like men, but well nigh like beasts, by the ways or in their

tillages or about the houses, indifferently by day and night. By reason whereof,

growing lax like the townsfolk in their manners and customs, they recked not

[i.e., did not take care or notice] of anything or business of theirs; nay, all, as if

they looked for death that very day, studied with all their wit, not to help to

maturity the future produce of their cattle and their fields and the fruits of their

own past toils, but to consume those which were ready to hand. Thus it came to

pass that the oxen, the asses, the sheep, the goats, the swine, the fowls, nay, the

very dogs, so faithful to mankind, being driven forth of their own houses, went

straying at their pleasure about the fields, where the very corn was abandoned,

without being cut, much less gathered in; and many, well nigh like reasonable

creatures, after grazing all day, returned at night, glutted, to their houses,

without the constraint of any herdsman.

To leave the country and return to the city, what more can be said save that

such and so great was the cruelty of heaven (and in part, peradventure, that of

men) that, between March and the following July, what with the virulence of

that pestiferous sickness and the number of sick folk ill tended or forsaken in

their need, through the fearfulness of those who were whole, it is believed for

certain that upward of an hundred thousand human beings perished within the

walls of the city of Florence, which, peradventure, before the advent of that

death-dealing calamity, had not been accounted to hold so many? Alas, how

many great palaces, how many goodly houses, how many noble mansions, once

full of families, of lords and of ladies, abode empty even to the meanest

servant! How many memorable families, how many ample heritages, how

many famous fortunes were seen to remain without lawful heir! How many

valiant men, how many fair ladies, how many sprightly youths, whom, not

others only, but Galen, Hippocrates or Æsculapius themselves would have

judged most hale, breakfasted in the morning with their kinsfolk, comrades and

friends and that same night supped with their ancestors in the other world!