The disease was mainly communicated via rats and other vermin.

Loth was he to move / From the imprinted couch, and when he did, / 'Twas with slow, languid paces, and face hid / In muffling hands.

Oswald , broach the oldest wine-cask ; place the best mead , the richest morat , the most sparkling cyder , the most odoriferous pigment, upon the board

In the nexal family the unity of the group is achieved through the experience by each of the group, and the danger to each person (since the person is essential to the nexus, and the nexus is essential to the person) is the dissolution or dispersion of 'the family'.