I.  THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF EPIDEMICS AND SANITATION.



A very striking feature in recorded history has been the

recurrence of great pestilences.  Various indications in ancient

times show their frequency, while the famous description of the

plague of Athens given by Thucydides, and the discussion of it by

Lucretius, exemplify their severity.  In the Middle Ages they

raged from time to time throughout Europe:  such plagues as the

Black Death and the sweating sickness swept off vast multitudes,

the best authorities estimating that of the former, at the middle

of the fourteenth century, more than half the population of

England died, and that twenty-five millions of people perished in

various parts of Europe.  In 1552 sixty-seven thousand patients

died of the plague at Paris alone, and in 1580 more than twenty

thousand.  The great plague in England and other parts of Europe

in the seventeenth century was also fearful, and that which swept

the south of Europe in the early part of the eighteenth century,

as well as the invasions by the cholera at various times during

the nineteenth, while less terrible than those of former years,

have left a deep impress upon the imaginations of men.



From the earliest records we find such pestilences attributed to

the wrath or malice of unseen powers.  This had been the

prevailing view even in the most cultured ages before the

establishment of Christianity:  in Greece and Rome especially,

plagues of various sorts were attributed to the wrath of the

gods; in Judea, the scriptural records of various plagues sent

upon the earth by the Divine fiat as a punishment for sin show

the continuance of this mode of thought.  Among many examples and

intimations of this in our sacred literature, we have the

epidemic which carried off fourteen thousand seven hundred of the

children of Israel, and which was only stayed by the prayers and

offerings of Aaron, the high priest; the destruction of seventy

thousand men in the pestilence by which King David was punished

for the numbering of Israel, and which was only stopped when the

wrath of Jahveh was averted by burnt-offerings; the plague

threatened by the prophet Zechariah, and that delineated in the

Apocalypse.  From these sources this current of ideas was poured

into the early Christian Church, and hence it has been that

during nearly twenty centuries since the rise of Christianity,

and down to a period within living memory, at the appearance of

any pestilence the Church authorities, instead of devising

sanitary measures, have very generally preached the necessity of

immediate atonement for offences against the Almighty.



This view of the early Church was enriched greatly by a new

development of theological thought regarding the powers of Satan

and evil angels, the declaration of St. Paul that the gods of

antiquity were devils being cited as its sufficient

warrant.[329]



[329] For plague during the Peloponnesian war, see Thucydides,

vol. ii, pp.47-55, and vol. iii, p. 87.  For a general statement

regarding this and other plagues in ancient times, see Lucretius,

vol. vi, pp. 1090 et seq.; and for a translation, see vol. i, p.

179, in Munro's edition of 1886.  For early views of sanitary

science in Greece and Rome, see Forster's Inquiry, in The

Pamphleteer, vol. xxiv, p. 404.  For the Greek view of the

interference of the gods in disease, especially in pestilence,

see Grote's History of Greece, vol. i, pp. 251, 485, and vol. vi,

p. 213; see also Herodotus, lib. iii, c. xxxviii, and elsewhere.

For the Hebrew view of the same interference by the Almighty, see

especially Numbers xi, 4-34; also xvi, 49; I Samuel xxiv; also

Psalm cvi, 29; also the well-known texts in Zechariah and

Revelation. For St. Paul's declaration that the gods of the

heathen are devils, see I Cor. x, 20.  As to the earlier origin

of the plague in Egypt, see Haeser, 'Lehrbuch der Geschichte der

Medicin und der epidemischen Krankheiten, Jena, 1875-'82, vol.

iii, pp. 15 et seq.





Moreover, comets, falling stars, and earthquakes were thought,

upon scriptural authority, to be "signs and wonders"-- evidences

of the Divine wrath, heralds of fearful visitations; and this

belief, acting powerfully upon the minds of millions, did much to

create a panic-terror sure to increase epidemic disease wherever

it broke forth.



The main cause of this immense sacrifice of life is now known to

have been the want of hygienic precaution, both in the Eastern

centres, where various plagues were developed, and in the

European towns through which they spread.  And here certain

theological reasonings came in to resist the evolution of a

proper sanitary theory.  Out of the Orient had been poured into

the thinking of western Europe the theological idea that the

abasement of man adds to the glory of God; that indignity to the

body may secure salvation to the soul; hence, that cleanliness

betokens pride and filthiness humility.  Living in filth was

regarded by great numbers of holy men, who set an example to the

Church and to society, as an evidence of sanctity.  St. Jerome

and the Breviary of the Roman Church dwell with unction on the

fact that St. Hilarion lived his whole life long in utter

physical uncleanliness; St. Athanasius glorifies St. Anthony

because he had never washed his feet; St. Abraham's most striking

evidence of holiness was that for fifty years he washed neither

his hands nor his feet; St. Sylvia never washed any part of her

body save her fingers; St. Euphraxia belonged to a convent in

which the nuns religiously abstained from bathing.  St. Mary of

Egypt was eminent for filthiness; St. Simnon Stylites was in this

respect unspeakable--the least that can be said is, that he lived

in ordure and stench intolerable to his visitors.  The Lives of

the Saints dwell with complacency on the statement that, when

sundry Eastern monks showed a disposition to wash themselves, the

Almighty manifested his displeasure by drying up a neighbouring

stream until the bath which it had supplied was destroyed.



The religious world was far indeed from the inspired utterance

attributed to John Wesley, that "cleanliness is near akin to

godliness."  For century after century the idea prevailed that

filthiness was akin to holiness; and, while we may well believe

that the devotion of the clergy to the sick was one cause why,

during the greater plagues, they lost so large a proportion of

their numbers, we can not escape the conclusion that their want

of cleanliness had much to do with it.  In France, during the

fourteenth century, Guy de Chauliac, the great physician of his

time, noted particularly that certain Carmelite monks suffered

especially from pestilence, and that they were especially filthy.

During the Black Death no less than nine hundred Carthusian monks

fell victims in one group of buildings.



Naturally, such an example set by the venerated leaders of

thought exercised great influence throughout society, and all the

more because it justified the carelessness and sloth to which

ordinary humanity is prone.  In the principal towns of Europe, as

well as in the country at large, down to a recent period, the

most ordinary sanitary precautions were neglected, and

pestilences continued to be attributed to the wrath of God or the

malice of Satan.  As to the wrath of God, a new and powerful

impulse was given to this belief in the Church toward the end of

the sixth century by St. Gregory the Great.  In 590, when he was

elected Pope, the city of Rome was suffering from a dreadful

pestilence:  the people were dying by thousands; out of one

procession imploring the mercy of Heaven no less than eighty

persons died within an hour:  what the heathen in an earlier

epoch had attributed to Apollo was now attributed to Jehovah, and

chroniclers tell us that fiery darts were seen flung from heaven

into the devoted city.  But finally, in the midst of all this

horror, Gregory, at the head of a penitential procession, saw

hovering over the mausoleum of Hadrian the figure of the

archangel Michael, who was just sheathing a flaming sword, while

three angels were heard chanting the Regina Coeli.  The legend

continues that the Pope immediately broke forth into hallelujahs

for this sign that the plague was stayed, and, as it shortly

afterward became less severe, a chapel was built at the summit of

the mausoleum and dedicated to St. Michael; still later, above

the whole was erected the colossal statue of the archangel

sheathing his sword, which still stands to perpetuate the legend.

Thus the greatest of Rome's ancient funeral monuments was made to

bear testimony to this medieval belief; the mausoleum of Hadrian

became the castle of St. Angelo.  A legend like this, claiming

to date from the greatest of the early popes, and vouched for by

such an imposing monument, had undoubtedly a marked effect upon

the dominant theology throughout Europe, which was constantly

developing a great body of thought regarding the agencies by

which the Divine wrath might be averted.



First among these agencies, naturally, were evidences of

devotion, especially gifts of land, money, or privileges to

churches, monasteries, and shrines--the seats of fetiches which

it was supposed had wrought cures or might work them.  The whole

evolution of modern history, not only ecclesiastical but civil,

has been largely affected by the wealth transferred to the clergy

at such periods.  It was noted that in the fourteenth century,

after the great plague, the Black Death, had passed, an immensely

increased proportion of the landed and personal property of every

European country was in the hands of the Church.  Well did a

great ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests of

the ministers of God."[330]



[330] For triumphant mention of St. Hilarion's filth, see the

Roman Breviary for October 21st; and for details, see S.

Hieronymus, Vita S. Hilarionis Eremitae, in Migne, Patrologia,

vol. xxiii.  For Athanasius's reference to St. Anthony's filth,

see works of St. Athanasius in the Nicene and Post-Nicene

Fathers, second series, vol. iv, p. 209.  For the filthiness of

the other saints named, see citations from the Lives of the

Saints, in Lecky's History of European Morals, vol. ii, pp. 117,

118.  For Guy de Chauliac's observation on the filthiness of

Carmelite monks and their great losses by pestilence, see Meryon,

History of Medicine, vol. i, p. 257.  For the mortality among the

Carthusian monks in time of plague, see Mrs. Lecky's very

interesting Visit to the Grand Chartreuse, in The Nineteenth

Century for March, 1891.  For the plague at Rome in 590, the

legend regarding the fiery darts, mentioned by Pope Gregory

himself, and that of the castle of St. Angelo, see Gregorovius,

Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, vol. ii, pp. 26-35; also

Story, Castle of St. Angelo, etc., chap. ii.  For the remark that

"pestilences are the harvest of the ministers of God," see

reference to Charlevoix, in Southey, History of Brazil, vol. ii,

p. 254, cited in Buckle, vol. i, p. 130, note.





Other modes of propitiating the higher powers were penitential

processions, the parading of images of the Virgin or of saints

through plague-stricken towns, and fetiches innumerable.  Very

noted in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the

processions of the flagellants, trooping through various parts of

Europe, scourging their naked bodies, shrieking the penitential

psalms, and often running from wild excesses of devotion to the

maddest orgies.



Sometimes, too, plagues were attributed to the wrath of lesser

heavenly powers.  Just as, in former times, the fury of

"far-darting Apollo" was felt when his name was not respectfully

treated by mortals, so, in 1680, the Church authorities at Rome

discovered that the plague then raging resulted from the anger of

St. Sebastian because no monument had been erected to him.  Such

a monument was therefore placed in the Church of St. Peter ad

Vincula, and the plague ceased.



So much for the endeavour to avert the wrath of the heavenly

powers.  On the other hand, theological reasoning no less subtle

was used in thwarting the malice of Satan.  This idea, too, came

from far.  In the sacred books of India and Persia, as well as in

our own, we find the same theory of disease, leading to similar

means of cure.  Perhaps the most astounding among Christian

survivals of this theory and its resultant practices was seen

during the plague at Rome in 1522.  In that year, at that centre

of divine illumination, certain people, having reasoned upon the

matter, came to the conclusion that this great scourge was the

result of Satanic malice; and, in view of St. Paul's declaration

that the ancient gods were devils, and of the theory that the

ancient gods of Rome were the devils who had the most reason to

punish that city for their dethronement, and that the great

amphitheatre was the chosen haunt of these demon gods, an ox

decorated with garlands, after the ancient heathen manner, was

taken in procession to the Colosseum and solemnly sacrificed.

Even this proved vain, and the Church authorities then ordered

expiatory processions and ceremonies to propitiate the Almighty,

the Virgin, and the saints, who had been offended by this

temporary effort to bribe their enemies.



But this sort of theological reasoning developed an idea far more

disastrous, and this was that Satan, in causing pestilences, used

as his emissaries especially Jews and witches.  The proof of this

belief in the case of the Jews was seen in the fact that they

escaped with a less percentage of disease than did the Christians

in the great plague periods.  This was doubtless due in some

measure to their remarkable sanitary system, which had probably

originated thousands of years before in Egypt, and had been

handed down through Jewish lawgivers and statesmen.  Certainly

they observed more careful sanitary rules and more constant

abstinence from dangerous foods than was usual among Christians;

but the public at large could not understand so simple a cause,

and jumped to the conclusion that their immunity resulted from

protection by Satan, and that this protection was repaid and the

pestilence caused by their wholesale poisoning of Christians.  As

a result of this mode of thought, attempts were made in all parts

of Europe to propitiate the Almighty, to thwart Satan, and to

stop the plague by torturing and murdering the Jews.  Throughout

Europe during great pestilences we hear of extensive burnings of

this devoted people.  In Bavaria, at the time of the Black Death,

it is computed that twelve thousand Jews thus perished; in the

small town of Erfurt the number is said to have been three

thousand; in Strasburg, the Rue Brulee remains as a monument to

the two thousand Jews burned there for poisoning the wells and

causing the plague of 1348; at the royal castle of Chinon, near

Tours, an immense trench was dug, filled with blazing wood, and

in a single day one hundred and sixty Jews were burned.

Everywhere in continental Europe this mad persecution went on;

but it is a pleasure to say that one great churchman, Pope

Clement VI, stood against this popular unreason, and, so far as

he could bring his influence to bear on the maddened populace,

exercised it in favour of mercy to these supposed enemies of the

Almighty.[331]



[331] For an early conception in India of the Divinity acting

through medicine, see The Bhagavadgita, translated by Telang, p.

82, in Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East.  For the necessity

of religious means of securing knowledge of medicine, see the

Anugita, translated by Telang, in Max Muller's Sacred Books of

the East, p. 388.  For ancient Persian ideas of sickness as sent

by the spirit of evil and to be cured by spells, but not

excluding medicine and surgery, and for sickness generally as

caused by the evil principle in demons, see the Zend-Avesta,

Darmesteter's translation, introduction, passim, but especially

p. xciii.  For diseases wrought by witchcraft, see the same, pp.

230, 293. On the preferences of spells in healing over medicine

and surgery, see Zend-Avesta, vol. i, pp. 85, 86.  For healing by

magic in ancient Greece, see, e. g., the cure of Ulysses in the

Odyssey, "They stopped the black blood by a spell" (Odyssey,

xxix, 457).  For medicine in Egypt as partly priestly and partly

in the hands of physicians, see Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii,

p. 136, note.  For ideas of curing of disease by expulsion of

demons still surviving among various tribes and nations of Asia,

see J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: a Study of Comparative

Religion, London, 1890, pp. 184-192.  For the Flagellants and

their processions at the time of the Black Death, see Lea,

History of the Inquisition, New York, 1888, vol. ii, pp. 381 et

seq.  For the persecution of the Jews in time of pestilence, see

ibid., p. 379 and following, with authorities in the notes.  For

the expulsion of the Jews from Padua, see the Acta Sanctorum,

September, tom. viii, p. 893.





Yet, as late as 1527, the people of Pavia, being threatened with

plague, appealed to St. Bernardino of Feltro, who during his

life had been a fierce enemy of the Jews, and they passed a

decree promising that if the saint would avert the pestilence

they would expel the Jews from the city.  The saint apparently

accepted the bargain, and in due time the Jews were expelled.



As to witches, the reasons for believing them the cause of

pestilence also came from far.  This belief, too, had been poured

mainly from Oriental sources into our sacred books and thence

into the early Church, and was strengthened by a whole line of

Church authorities, fathers, doctors, and saints; but, above

all, by the great bull, Summis Desiderantes, issued by Pope

Innocent VIII, in 1484.  This utterance from the seat of St.

Peter infallibly committed the Church to the idea that witches

are a great cause of disease, storms, and various ills which

afflict humanity; and the Scripture on which the action

recommended against witches in this papal bull, as well as in so

many sermons and treatises for centuries afterward, was based,

was the famous text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

This idea persisted long, and the evolution of it is among the

most fearful things in human history.[332]



[332] On the plagues generally, see Hecker, Epidemics of the

Middle Ages, passim; but especially Haeser, as above, III. Band,

pp. 1-202; also Sprengel, Baas, Isensee, et al.  For brief

statement showing the enormous loss of life in these plagues, see

Littre, Medecine et Medecins, Paris, 1875, pp. 3 et seq.  For a

summary of the effects of the Black Plague throughout England,

see Green's Short History of the English People, chap. v.  For

the mortality in the Paris hospitals, see Desmazes, Supplices,

Prisons et Graces en France, Paris 1866.  For striking

descriptions of plague-stricken cities, see the well-known

passages in Thucydides, Boccaccio, De Foe, and, above all,

Manzoni's Promessi Sposi.  For examples of averting the plagues

by processions, see Leopold  Delisle, Etudes sur la Condition de

la Classe Agricole, etc., en Normandie au Moyen Age, p. 630; also

Fort, chap. xxiii.  For the anger of St. Sebastian as a cause of

the plague at Rome, and its cessation when a monument had been

erected to him, see Paulus Diaconus, cited in Gregorovius, vol.

ii. p. 165.  For the sacrifice of an ox in the Colosseum to the

ancient gods as a means of averting the plague of 1522, at Rome,

see Gregorovius, vol. viii, p. 390.  As to massacres of the Jews

in order to avert the wrath of God in pestilence, see L'Ecole et

la Science, Paris, 1887, p. 178; also Hecker, and especially

Hoeniger, Gang und Verbreitung des Schwarzen Todes in

Deutschalnd, Berlin, 1889.  For a long list of towns in which

burnings of Jews took place for this imaginary cause, see pp.

7-11.  As to absolute want of sanitary precautions, see Hecker,

p. 292.  As to condemnation by strong religionists of medical

means in the plague, see Fort, p. 130.  For a detailed account of

the action of Popes Eugene IV, Innocent VIII, and other popes,

against witchcraft, ascribing to it storms and diseases, and for

the bull Summis Desiderantes, see the chapters on Meteorology and

Magic in this series.  The text of the bull is given in the

Malleus Maleficarum, in Binsfield, and in Roskoff, Geschichte des

Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, vol. i, pp. 222-225, and a good summary

and analysis of it in Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprocesse.  For

a concise and admirable statement of the contents and effects of

the bull, see Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. iii, pp. 40

et seq.; and for the best statement known to me of the general

subject, Prof. George L. Burr's paper on The Literature of

Witchcraft, read before the American Historical Association at

Washington, 1890.





In Germany its development was especially terrible.  From the

middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth,

Catholic and Protestant theologians and ecclesiastics vied with

each other in detecting witches guilty of producing sickness or

bad weather; women were sent to torture and death by thousands,

and with them, from time to time, men and children.  On the

Catholic side sufficient warrant for this work was found in the

bull of Pope Innocent VIII, and the bishops' palaces of south

Germany became shambles,--the lordly prelates of Salzburg,

Wurzburg, and Bamberg taking the lead in this butchery.



In north Germany Protestantism was just as conscientiously cruel.

It based its theory and practice toward witches directly upon the

Bible, and above all on the great text which has cost the lives

of so many myriads of innocent men, women, and children, "Thou

shalt not suffer a witch to live."  Naturally the Protestant

authorities strove to show that Protestantism was no less

orthodox in this respect than Catholicism; and such theological

jurists as Carpzov, Damhouder, and Calov did their work

thoroughly.  An eminent authority on this subject estimates the

number of victims thus sacrificed during that century in Germany

alone at over a hundred thousand.



Among the methods of this witch activity especially credited in

central and southern Europe was the anointing of city walls and

pavements with a diabolical unguent causing pestilence.  In 1530

Michael Caddo was executed with fearful tortures for thus

besmearing the pavements of Geneva.  But far more dreadful was

the torturing to death of a large body of people at Milan, in the

following century, for producing the plague by anointing the

walls; and a little later similar punishments for the same crime

were administered in Toulouse and other cities.  The case in

Milan may be briefly summarized as showing the ideas on sanitary

science of all classes, from highest to lowest, in the

seventeenth century.  That city was then under the control of

Spain; and, its authorities having received notice from the

Spanish Government that certain persons suspected of witchcraft

had recently left Madrid, and had perhaps gone to Milan to anoint


the walls, this communication was dwelt upon in the pulpits as

another evidence of that Satanic malice which the Church alone

had the means of resisting, and the people were thus excited and

put upon the alert.  One morning, in the year 1630, an old woman,

looking out of her window, saw a man walking along the street and

wiping his fingers upon the walls; she immediately called the

attention of another old woman, and they agreed that this man

must be one of the diabolical anointers.  It was perfectly

evident to a person under ordinary conditions that this

unfortunate man was simply trying to remove from his fingers the

ink gathered while writing from the ink-horn which he carried in

his girdle; but this explanation was too simple to satisfy those

who first observed him or those who afterward tried him:  a mob

was raised and he was thrown into prison.  Being tortured, he at

first did not know what to confess; but, on inquiring from the

jailer and others, he learned what the charge was, and, on being

again subjected to torture utterly beyond endurance, he confessed

everything which was suggested to him; and, on being tortured

again and again to give the names of his accomplices, he accused,

at hazard, the first people in the city whom he thought of.

These, being arrested and tortured beyond endurance, confessed

and implicated a still greater number, until members of the

foremost families were included in the charge.  Again and again

all these unfortunates were tortured beyond endurance.  Under

paganism, the rule regarding torture had been that it should not

be carried beyond human endurance; and we therefore find Cicero

ridiculing it as a means of detecting crime, because a stalwart

criminal of strong nerves might resist it and go free, while a

physically delicate man, though innocent, would be forced to

confess.  Hence it was that under paganism a limit was imposed to

the torture which could be administered; but, when Christianity

had become predominant throughout Europe, torture was developed

with a cruelty never before known.  There had been evolved a

doctrine of "excepted cases"--these "excepted cases" being

especially heresy and witchcraft; for by a very simple and

logical process of theological reasoning it was held that Satan

would give supernatural strength to his special devotees--that

is, to heretics and witches--and therefore that, in dealing with

them, there should be no limit to the torture.  The result was in

this particular case, as in tens of thousands besides, that the

accused confessed everything which could be suggested to them,

and often in the delirium of their agony confessed far more than

all that the zeal of the prosecutors could suggest.  Finally, a

great number of worthy people were sentenced to the most cruel

death which could be invented.  The records of their trials and

deaths are frightful.  The treatise which in recent years has

first brought to light in connected form an authentic account of

the proceedings in this affair, and which gives at the end

engravings of the accused subjected to horrible tortures on their

way to the stake and at the place of execution itself, is one of

the most fearful monuments of theological reasoning and human

folly.



To cap the climax, after a poor apothecary had been tortured into

a confession that he had made the magic ointment, and when he had

been put to death with the most exquisite refinements of torture,

his family were obliged to take another name, and were driven out

from the city; his house was torn down, and on its site was

erected "The Column of Infamy," which remained on this spot

until, toward the end of the eighteenth century, a party of young

radicals, probably influenced by the reading of Beccaria, sallied

forth one night and leveled this pious monument to the ground.



Herein was seen the culmination and decline of the bull Summis

Desiderantes.  It had been issued by him whom a majority of the

Christian world believes to be infallible in his teachings to the

Church as regards faith and morals; yet here was a deliberate

utterance in a matter of faith and morals which even children now

know to be utterly untrue.  Though Beccaria's book on Crimes and

Punishments, with its declarations against torture, was placed

by the Church authorities upon the Index, and though the

faithful throughout the Christian world were forbidden to read

it, even this could not prevent the victory of truth over this

infallible utterance of Innocent VIII.[333]



[333] As to the fearful effects of the papal bull Summis

Desiderantes in south Germany, as to the Protestant severities in

north Germany, as to the immense number of women and children put

to death for witchcraft in Germany generally for spreading storms

and pestilence, and as to the monstrous doctrine of "excepted

cases," see the standard authorities on witchcraft, especially

Wachter, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Strafrechts, Soldan, Horst,

Hauber, and Langin; also Burr, as above.  In another series of

chapters on The Warfare of Humanity with Theology, I hope to go

more fully into the subject.  For the magic spreading of the

plague at Milan, see Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi and La Colonna

Infame; and for the origin of the charges, with all the details

of the trail, see the Precesso Originale degli Untori, Milan,

1839, passim, but especially the large folding plate at the end,

exhibiting the tortures.  For the after-history of the Column of

Infamy, and for the placing of Beccaria's book on the Index, see

Cantu, Vita di Beccaria.  For the magic spreading of the plague

in general, see Littre, pp. 492 and following.





As the seventeenth century went on, ingenuity in all parts of

Europe seemed devoted to new developments of fetichism.  A very

curious monument of this evolution in Italy exists in the Royal

Gallery of Paintings at Naples, where may be seen several

pictures representing the measures taken to save the city from

the plague during the seventeenth century, but especially from

the plague of 1656.  One enormous canvas gives a curious example

of the theological doctrine of intercession between man and his

Maker, spun out to its logical length.  In the background is the

plague-stricken city:  in the foreground the people are praying

to the city authorities to avert the plague; the city authorities

are praying to the Carthusian monks; the monks are praying to St.

Martin, St. Bruno, and St. Januarius; these three saints in

their turn are praying to the Virgin; the Virgin prays to Christ;

and Christ prays to the Almighty.  Still another picture

represents the people, led by the priests, executing with

horrible tortures the Jews, heretics, and witches who were

supposed to cause the pestilence of 1656, while in the heavens

the Virgin and St. Januarius are interceding with Christ to

sheathe his sword and stop the plague.



In such an atmosphere of thought it is no wonder that the death

statistics were appalling.  We hear of districts in which not

more than one in ten escaped, and some were entirely depopulated.



Such appeals to fetich against pestilence have continued in

Naples down to our own time, the great saving power being the

liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius.  In 1856 the present

writer saw this miracle performed in the gorgeous chapel of the

saint forming part of the Cathedral of Naples.  The chapel was

filled with devout worshippers of every class, from the officials

in court dress, representing the Bourbon king, down to the lowest

lazzaroni.  The reliquary of silver-gilt, shaped like a large

human head, and supposed to contain the skull of the saint, was

first placed upon the altar; next, two vials containing a dark

substance said to be his blood, having been taken from the wall,

were also placed upon the altar near the head.  As the priests

said masses, they turned the vials from time to time, and the

liquefaction being somewhat delayed, the great crowd of people

burst out into more and more impassioned expostulation and

petitions to the saint.  Just in front of the altar were the

lazzaroni who claimed to be descendants of the saint's family,

and these were especially importunate:  at such times they beg,

they scold, they even threaten; they have been known to abuse

the saint roundly, and to tell him that, if he did not care to

show his favour to the city by liquefying his blood, St. Cosmo

and St. Damian were just as good saints as he, and would no doubt

be very glad to have the city devote itself to them.  At last, on

the occasion above referred to, the priest, turning the vials

suddenly, announced that the saint had performed the miracle, and

instantly priests, people, choir, and organ burst forth into a

great Te Deum; bells rang, and cannon roared; a procession was

formed, and the shrine containing the saint's relics was carried

through the streets, the people prostrating themselves on both

sides of the way and throwing showers of rose leaves upon the

shrine and upon the path before it.  The contents of these

precious vials are an interesting relic indeed, for they

represent to us vividly that period when men who were willing to

go to the stake for their religious opinions thought it not wrong

to save the souls of their fellowmen by pious mendacity and

consecrated fraud.  To the scientific eye this miracle is very

simple:  the vials contain, no doubt, one of those mixtures

fusing at low temperature, which, while kept in its place within

the cold stone walls of the church, remains solid, but upon being

brought out into the hot, crowded chapel, and fondled by the warm

hands of the priests, gradually softens and becomes liquid.  It

was curious to note, at the time above mentioned, that even the

high functionaries representing the king looked at the miracle

with awe:  they evidently found "joy in believing," and one of

them assured the present writer that the only thing which COULD

cause it was the direct exercise of miraculous power.



It may be reassuring to persons contemplating a visit to that

beautiful capital in these days, that, while this miracle still

goes on, it is no longer the only thing relied upon to preserve

the public health.  An unbelieving generation, especially taught

by the recent horrors of the cholera, has thought it wise to

supplement the power of St. Januarius by the "Risanamento,"

begun mainly in 1885 and still going on.  The drainage of the

city has thus been greatly improved, the old wells closed, and

pure water introduced from the mountains.  Moreover, at the last

outburst of cholera a few years since, a noble deed was done

which by its moral effect exercised a widespread healing power.

Upon hearing of this terrific outbreak of pestilence, King

Humbert, though under the ban of the Church, broke from all the

entreaties of his friends and family, went directly into the

plague-stricken city, and there, in the streets, public places,

and hospitals, encouraged the living, comforted the sick and

dying, and took means to prevent a further spread of the

pestilence.  To the credit of the Church it should also be said

that the Cardinal Archbishop San Felice joined him in this.



Miracle for miracle, the effect of this visit of the king seems

to have surpassed anything that St. Januarius could do, for it

gave confidence and courage which very soon showed their effects

in diminishing the number of deaths.  It would certainly appear

that in this matter the king was more directly under Divine

inspiration and guidance than was the Pope; for the fact that

King Humbert went to Naples at the risk of his life, while Leo

XIII remained in safety at the Vatican, impressed the Italian

people in favour of the new regime and against the old as

nothing else could have done.



In other parts of Italy the same progress is seen under the new

Italian government.  Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, and especially Rome,

which under the sway of the popes was scandalously filthy, are

now among the cleanest cities in Europe.  What the relics of St.

Januarius, St. Anthony, and a multitude of local fetiches

throughout Italy were for ages utterly unable to do, has been

accomplished by the development of the simplest sanitary

principles.



Spain shows much the same characteristics of a country where

theological considerations have been all-controlling for

centuries.  Down to the interference of Napoleon with that

kingdom, all sanitary efforts were looked upon as absurd if not

impious.  The most sober accounts of travellers in the Spanish

Peninsula until a recent period are sometimes irresistibly comic

in their pictures of peoples insisting on maintaining

arrangements more filthy than any which would be permitted in an

American backwoods camp, while taking enormous pains to stop

pestilence by bell-ringings, processions, and new dresses

bestowed upon the local Madonnas; yet here, too, a healthful

scepticism has begun to work for good.  The outbreaks of cholera

in recent years have done some little to bring in better sanitary

measures.[334]



[334] As to the recourse to fetichism in Italy in time of plague,

and the pictures showing the intercession of Januarius and other

saints, I have relied on my own notes made at various visits to

Naples. For the general subject, see Peter, Etudes Napolitaines,

especially chapters v  and vi.  For detailed accounts of the

liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood by eye-witnesses, one an

eminent Catholic of the seventeenth century, and the other a

distinguished Protestant of our own time, see Murray's Handbook

for South Italy and Naples, description of the Cathedral of San

Gennaro.  For an interesting series of articles on the subject,

see The Catholic World for September, October, and November,

1871.  For the incredible filthiness of the great cities of

Spain, and the resistance of the people, down to a recent period,

to the most ordinary regulations prompted by decency, see

Bascome, History of the Epidemic Pestilences, especially pp. 119,

120.  See also the Autobiography of D'Ewes, London, 1845, vol.

ii, p. 446; also, for various citations, the second volume of

Buckle, History of Civilization in England.







II.  GRADUAL DECAY OF THEOLOGICAL VIEWS REGARDING SANITATION.





We have seen how powerful in various nations especially obedient

to theology were the forces working in opposition to the

evolution of hygiene, and we shall find this same opposition,

less effective, it is true, but still acting with great power, in

countries which had become somewhat emancipated from theological

control.  In England, during the medieval period, persecutions of

Jews were occasionally resorted to, and here and there we hear of

persecutions of witches; but, as torture was rarely used in

England, there were, from those charged with producing plague,

few of those torture-born confessions which in other countries

gave rise to widespread cruelties.  Down to the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries the filthiness in the ordinary mode of life

in England was such as we can now hardly conceive:  fermenting

organic material was allowed to accumulate and become a part of

the earthen floors of rural dwellings; and this undoubtedly

developed the germs of many diseases.  In his noted letter to the

physician of Cardinal Wolsey, Erasmus describes the filth thus

incorporated into the floors of English houses, and, what is of

far more importance, he shows an inkling of the true cause of the

wasting diseases of the period.  He says, "If I entered into a

chamber which had been uninhabited for months, I was immediately

seized with a fever."  He ascribed the fearful plague of the

sweating sickness to this cause.  So, too, the noted Dr. Caius

advised sanitary precautions against the plague, and in

after-generations, Mead, Pringle, and others urged them; but the

prevailing thought was too strong, and little was done.  Even the

floor of the presence chamber of Queen Elizabeth in Greenwich

Palace was "covered with hay, after the English fashion," as one

of the chroniclers tells us.



In the seventeenth century, aid in these great scourges was

mainly sought in special church services.  The foremost English

churchmen during that century being greatly given to study of the

early fathers of the Church; the theological theory of disease,

so dear to the fathers, still held sway, and this was the case

when the various visitations reached their climax in the great

plague of London in 1665, which swept off more than a hundred

thousand people from that city.  The attempts at meeting it by

sanitary measures were few and poor; the medical system of the

time was still largely tinctured by superstitions resulting from

medieval modes of thought; hence that plague was generally

attributed to the Divine wrath caused by "the prophaning of the

Sabbath."  Texts from Numbers, the Psalms, Zechariah, and the

Apocalypse were dwelt upon in the pulpits to show that plagues

are sent by the Almighty to punish sin; and perhaps the most

ghastly figure among all those fearful scenes described by De Foe

is that of the naked fanatic walking up and down the streets with

a pan of fiery coals upon his head, and, after the manner of

Jonah at Nineveh, proclaiming woe to the city, and its

destruction in forty days.



That sin caused this plague is certain, but it was sanitary sin.

Both before and after this culmination of the disease cases of

plague were constantly occurring in London throughout the

seventeenth century; but about the beginning of the eighteenth

century it began to disappear.  The great fire had done a good

work by sweeping off many causes and centres of infection, and

there had come wider streets, better pavements, and improved

water supply; so that, with the disappearance of the plague,

other diseases, especially dysenteries, which had formerly raged

in the city, became much less frequent.



But, while these epidemics were thus checked in London, others

developed by sanitary ignorance raged fearfully both there and

elsewhere, and of these perhaps the most fearful was the jail

fever.  The prisons of that period were vile beyond belief.  Men

were confined in dungeons rarely if ever disinfected after the

death of previous occupants, and on corridors connecting directly

with the foulest sewers:  there was no proper disinfection,

ventilation, or drainage; hence in most of the large prisons for

criminals or debtors the jail fever was supreme, and from these

centres it frequently spread through the adjacent towns.  This

was especially the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries.  In the Black Assize at Oxford, in 1577, the chief

baron, the sheriff, and about three hundred men died within forty

hours.  Lord Bacon declared the jail fever "the most pernicious

infection next to the plague."  In 1730, at the Dorsetshire

Assize, the chief baron and many lawyers were killed by it.  The

High Sheriff of Somerset also took the disease and died.  A

single Scotch regiment, being infected from some prisoners, lost

no less than two hundred.  In 1750 the disease was so virulent at

Newgate, in the heart of London, that two judges, the lord mayor,

sundry aldermen, and many others, died of it.



It is worth noting that, while efforts at sanitary dealing with

this state of things were few, the theological spirit developed a

new and special form of prayer for the sufferers and placed it in

the Irish Prayer Book.



These forms of prayer seem to have been the main reliance through

the first half of the eighteenth century.  But about 1750 began

the work of John Howard, who visited the prisons of England, made

known their condition to the world, and never rested until they

were greatly improved.  Then he applied the same benevolent

activity to prisons in other countries, in the far East, and in

southern Europe, and finally laid down his life, a victim to

disease contracted on one of his missions of mercy; but the

hygienic reforms he began were developed more and more until this

fearful blot upon modern civilization was removed.[335]



[335] For Erasmus, see the letter cited in Bascome, History of

Epidemic Pestilences, London, 1851.  For the account of the

condition of Queen Elizabeth's presence chamber, see the same, p.

206; see also the same for attempts at sanitation by Caius, Mead,

Pringle, and others; also see Baas and various medical

authorities.  For the plague in London, see Green's History of

the English People, chap. ix, sec. 2; and for a more detailed

account, see Lingard, History of England, enlarged edition of

1849, vol. ix, pp. 107 et seq.  For full scientific discussion of

this and other plagues from a medical point of view, see

Creighton, History of Epidemics in Great Britain, vol. ii, chap.

i.  For the London plague as a punishment for Sabbath-breaking,

see A Divine Tragedie lately acted, or A collection of sundry

memorable examples of God's judgements upon Sabbath Breakers and

other like libertines, etc., by the worthy divine, Mr. Henry

Burton, 1641.  The book gives fifty-six accounts of Sabbath-

breakers sorely punished, generally struck dead, in England, with

places, names, and dates.  For a general account of the condition

of London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the

diminution of the plague by the rebuilding of some parts of the

city after the great fire, see Lecky, History of England in the

Eighteenth Century, vol. i, pp. 592, 593.  For the jail fever,

see Lecky, vol. i, pp. 500-503.





The same thing was seen in the Protestant colonies of America;

but here, while plagues were steadily attributed to Divine wrath

or Satanic malice, there was one case in which it was claimed

that such a visitation was due to the Divine mercy.  The

pestilence among the INDIANS, before the arrival of the Plymouth

Colony, was attributed in a notable work of that period to the

Divine purpose of clearing New England for the heralds of the

gospel; on the other hand, the plagues which destroyed the WHITE

population were attributed by the same authority to devils and

witches.  In Cotton Mather's Wonder of the Invisible World,

published at Boston in 1693, we have striking examples of this.

The great Puritan divine tells us:



"Plagues are some of those woes, with which the Divil troubles

us.  It is said of the Israelites, in 1 Cor.  10.  10.  THEY WERE

DESTROYED OF THE DESTROYER.  That is, they had the Plague among

them.  'Tis the Destroyer, or the Divil, that scatters Plagues

about the World:  Pestilential and Contagious Diseases, 'tis the

Divel, who do's oftentimes Invade us with them.  'Tis no uneasy

thing, for the Divel, to impregnate the Air about us, with such

Malignant Salts, as meeting with the Salt of our Microcosm, shall

immediately cast us into that Fermentation and Putrefaction,

which will utterly dissolve All the Vital Tyes within us; Ev'n

as an Aqua Fortis, made with a conjunction of Nitre and Vitriol,

Corrodes what it Siezes upon.  And when the Divel has raised

those Arsenical Fumes, which become Venomous.  Quivers full of

Terrible Arrows, how easily can he shoot the deleterious Miasms

into those Juices or Bowels of Men's Bodies, which will soon

Enflame them with a Mortal Fire! Hence come such Plagues, as that

Beesome of Destruction which within our memory swept away such a

throng of people from one English City in one Visitation:  and

hence those Infectious Feavers, which are but so many Disguised

Plagues among us, Causing Epidemical Desolations."



Mather gives several instances of witches causing diseases, and

speaks of "some long Bow'd down under such a Spirit of Infirmity"

being "Marvelously Recovered upon the Death of the Witches," of

which he gives an instance.  He also cites a case where a patient

"was brought unto death's door and so remained until the witch

was taken and carried away by the constable, when he began at

once to recover and was soon well."[336]



[336] For the passages from Cotton Mather, see his book as cited,

pp. 17, 18, also 134, 145.  Johnson declares that "by this meanes

Christ . . . not only made roome for His people to plant, but

also tamed the hard and cruell hearts of these barbarous Indians,

insomuch that a halfe a handful of His people landing not long

after in Plymouth Plantation, found little resistance."   See The

History of New England, by Edward Johnson, London, 1654.

Reprinted in the Massachusetts Historical Society's Collection,

second series, vol. i, p. 67.





In France we see, during generation after generation, a similar

history evolved; pestilence after pestilence came, and was met

by various fetiches.  Noteworthy is the plague at Marseilles near

the beginning of the last century.  The chronicles of its sway

are ghastly.  They speak of great heaps of the unburied dead in

the public places, "forming pestilential volcanoes"; of

plague-stricken men and women in delirium wandering naked through

the streets; of churches and shrines thronged with great crowds

shrieking for mercy; of other crowds flinging themselves into

the wildest debauchery; of robber bands assassinating the dying

and plundering the dead; of three thousand neglected children

collected in one hospital and then left to die; and of the

death-roll numbering at last fifty thousand out of a population

of less than ninety thousand.



In the midst of these fearful scenes stood a body of men and

women worthy to be held in eternal honour--the physicians from

Paris and Montpellier; the mayor of the city, and one or two of

his associates; but, above all, the Chevalier Roze and Bishop

Belzunce.  The history of these men may well make us glory in

human nature; but in all this noble group the figure of Belzunce

is the most striking.  Nobly and firmly, when so many others even

among the regular and secular ecclesiastics fled, he stood by his

flock:  day and night he was at work in the hospitals, cheering

the living, comforting the dying, and doing what was possible for

the decent disposal of the dead.  In him were united the, two

great antagonistic currents of religion and of theology.  As a

theologian he organized processions and expiatory services,

which, it must be confessed, rather increased the disease than

diminished it; moreover, he accepted that wild dream of a

hysterical nun--the worship of the material, physical sacred

heart of Jesus--and was one of the first to consecrate his

diocese to it; but, on the other hand, the religious spirit gave

in him one of its most beautiful manifestations in that or any

other century; justly have the people of Marseilles placed his

statue in the midst of their city in an attitude of prayer and

blessing.



In every part of Europe and America, down to a recent period, we

find pestilences resulting from carelessness or superstition

still called "inscrutable providences."  As late as the end of

the eighteenth century, when great epidemics made fearful havoc

in Austria, the main means against them seem to have been

grovelling before the image of St. Sebastian and calling in

special "witch-doctors"--that is, monks who cast out devils.  To

seek the aid of physicians was, in the neighbourhood of these

monastic centres, very generally considered impious, and the

enormous death rate in such neighbourhoods was only diminished in

the present century, when scientific hygiene began to make its

way.



The old view of pestilence had also its full course in

Calvinistic Scotland; the only difference being that, while in

Roman Catholic countries relief was sought by fetiches, gifts,

processions, exorcisms, burnings of witches, and other works of

expiation, promoted by priests; in Scotland, after the

Reformation, it was sought in fast-days and executions of witches

promoted by Protestant elders.  Accounts of the filthiness of

Scotch cities and villages, down to a period well within this

century, seem monstrous.  All that in these days is swept into

the sewers was in those allowed to remain around the houses or

thrown into the streets.  The old theological theory, that "vain

is the help of man," checked scientific thought and paralyzed

sanitary endeavour.  The result was natural:  between the

thirteenth and seventeenth centuries thirty notable epidemics

swept the country, and some of them carried off multitudes; but

as a rule these never suggested sanitary improvement; they were

called "visitations," attributed to Divine wrath against human

sin, and the work of the authorities was to announce the

particular sin concerned and to declaim against it.  Amazing

theories were thus propounded--theories which led to spasms of

severity; and, in some of these, offences generally punished much

less severely were visited with death.  Every pulpit interpreted

the ways of God to man in such seasons so as rather to increase

than to diminish the pestilence.  The effect of thus seeking

supernatural causes rather than natural may be seen in such facts

as the death by plague of one fourth of the whole population of

the city of Perth in a single year of the fifteenth century,

other towns suffering similarly both then and afterward.



Here and there, physicians more wisely inspired endeavoured to

push sanitary measures, and in 1585 attempts were made to clean

the streets of Edinburgh; but the chroniclers tell us that "the

magistrates and ministers gave no heed."  One sort of calamity,

indeed, came in as a mercy--the great fires which swept through

the cities, clearing and cleaning them.  Though the town council

of Edinburgh declared the noted fire of 1700 "a fearful rebuke of

God," it was observed that, after it had done its work, disease

and death were greatly diminished.[337]



[337] For the plague at Marseilles and its depopulation, see

Henri Martin, Histoire de France, vol. xv, especially document

cited in appendix; also Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xliii;

also Rambaud.  For the resort to witch doctors in Austria against

pestilence, down to the end of the eighteenth century, see

Biedermann, Deutschland im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert.  For the

resort to St. Sebastian, see the widespread editions of the Vita

et Gesta Sancti Sebastiani, contra pestem patroni, prefaced with

commendations from bishops and other high ecclesiastics.  The

edition in the Cornell University Library is that of Augsburg,

1693.  For the reign of filth and pestilence in Scotland, see

Charles Rogers, D. D., Social Life in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1884,

vol. i, pp. 305-316; see also Buckle's second volume.









III.  THE TRIUMPH OF SANITARY SCIENCE.





But by those standing in the higher places of thought some

glimpses of scientific truth had already been obtained, and

attempts at compromise between theology and science in this field

began to be made, not only by ecclesiastics, but first of all, as

far back as the seventeenth century, by a man of science eminent

both for attainments and character--Robert Boyle.  Inspired by

the discoveries in other fields, which had swept away so much of

theological thought, he could no longer resist the conviction

that some epidemics are due--in his own words--"to a tragical

concourse of natural causes"; but he argued that some of these

may be the result of Divine interpositions provoked by human

sins.  As time went on, great difficulties showed themselves in

the way of this compromise--difficulties theological not less

than difficulties scientific.  To a Catholic it was more and more

hard to explain the theological grounds why so many orthodox

cities, firm in the faith, were punished, and so many heretical

cities spared; and why, in regions devoted to the Church, the

poorer people, whose faith in theological fetiches was

unquestioning, died in times of pestilence like flies, while

sceptics so frequently escaped.  Difficulties of the same sort

beset devoted Protestants; they, too, might well ask why it was


that the devout peasantry in their humble cottages perished,

while so much larger a proportion of the more sceptical upper

classes were untouched.  Gradually it dawned both upon Catholic

and Protestant countries that, if any sin be punished by

pestilence, it is the sin of filthiness; more and more it began

to be seen by thinking men of both religions that Wesley's great

dictum stated even less than the truth; that not only was

"cleanliness akin to godliness," but that, as a means of keeping

off pestilence, it was far superior to godliness as godliness was

then generally understood.[338]



[338] For Boyle's attempt at compromise, see Discourse on the

Air, in his works, vol. iv, pp. 288, 289, cited by Buckle, vol.

i, pp. 128, 129, note.





The recent history of sanitation in all civilized countries shows

triumphs which might well fill us with wonder, did there not rise

within us a far greater wonder that they were so long delayed.

Amazing is it to see how near the world has come again and again

to discovering the key to the cause and cure of pestilence.  It

is now a matter of the simplest elementary knowledge that some of

the worst epidemics are conveyed in water.  But this fact seems

to have been discovered many times in human history.  In the

Peloponnesian war the Athenians asserted that their enemies had

poisoned their cisterns; in the Middle Ages the people generally

declared that the Jews had poisoned their wells; and as late as

the cholera of 1832 the Parisian mob insisted that the

water-carriers who distributed water for drinking purposes from

the Seine, polluted as it was by sewage, had poisoned it, and in

some cases murdered them on this charge:  so far did this feeling

go that locked covers were sometimes placed upon the

water-buckets.  Had not such men as Roger Bacon and his long line

of successors been thwarted by theological authority,--had not

such men as Thomas Aquinas, Vincent of Beauvais, and Albert the

Great been drawn or driven from the paths of science into the

dark, tortuous paths of theology, leading no whither,--the world

to-day, at the end of the nineteenth century, would have arrived

at the solution of great problems and the enjoyment of great

results which will only be reached at the end of the twentieth

century, and even in generations more remote.  Diseases like

typhoid fever, influenza and pulmonary consumption, scarlet

fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, and la grippe, which now carry off

so many most precious lives, would have long since ceased to

scourge the world.



Still, there is one cause for satisfaction:  the law governing

the relation of theology to disease is now well before the world,

and it is seen in the fact that, just in proportion as the world

progressed from the sway of Hippocrates to that of the ages of

faith, so it progressed in the frequency and severity of great

pestilences; and that, on the other hand, just in proportion as

the world has receded from that period when theology was

all-pervading and all-controlling, plague after plague has

disappeared, and those remaining have become less and less

frequent and virulent.[339]



[339] For the charge of poisoning water and producing pestilence

among the Greeks, see Grote, History of Greece, vol. vi, p. 213.

For a similar charge against the Jews in the Middle Ages, see

various histories already cited; and for the great popular

prejudice against water-carriers at Paris in recent times, see

the larger recent French histories.





The recent history of hygiene in all countries shows a long

series of victories, and these may well be studied in Great

Britain and the United States.  In the former, though there had

been many warnings from eminent physicians, and above all in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from men like Caius, Mead,

and Pringle, the result was far short of what might have been

gained; and it was only in the year 1838 that a systematic

sanitary effort was begun in England by the public authorities.

The state of things at that time, though by comparison with the

Middle Ages happy, was, by comparison with what has since been

gained, fearful:  the death rate among all classes was high, but

among the poor it was ghastly.  Out of seventy-seven thousand

paupers in London during the years 1837 and 1838, fourteen

thousand were suffering from fever, and of these nearly six

thousand from typhus.  In many other parts of the British Islands

the sanitary condition was no better.  A noble body of men

grappled with the problem, and in a few years one of these rose

above his fellows--the late Edwin Chadwick.  The opposition to

his work was bitter, and, though many churchmen aided him, the

support given by theologians and ecclesiastics as a whole was

very far short of what it should have been.  Too many of them

were occupied in that most costly and most worthless of all

processes, "the saving of souls" by the inculcation of dogma.

Yet some of the higher ecclesiastics and many of the lesser

clergy did much, sometimes risking their lives, and one of them,

Sidney Godolphin Osborne, deserves lasting memory for his

struggle to make known the sanitary wants of the peasantry.



Chadwick began to be widely known in 1848 as a member of the

Board of Health, and was driven out for a time for overzeal; but

from one point or another, during forty years, he fought the

opposition, developed the new work, and one of the best exhibits

of its results is shown in his address before the Sanitary

Conference at Brighton in 1888.  From this and other perfectly

trustworthy sources some idea may be gained of the triumph of the

scientific over the theological method of dealing with disease,

whether epidemic or sporadic.



In the latter half of the seventeenth century the annual

mortality of London is estimated at not less than eighty in a

thousand; about the middle of this century it stood at

twenty-four in a thousand; in 1889 it stood at less than

eighteen in a thousand; and in many parts the most recent

statistics show that it has been brought down to fourteen or

fifteen in a thousand.  A quarter of a century ago the death rate

from disease in the Royal Guards at London was twenty in a

thousand; in 1888 it had been reduced to six in a thousand.  In

the army generally it had been seventeen in a thousand, but it

has been reduced until it now stands at eight.  In the old Indian

army it had been sixty-nine in a thousand, but of late it has

been brought down first to twenty, and finally to fourteen.  Mr.

Chadwick in his speech proved that much more might be done, for

he called attention to the German army, where the death rate from

disease has been reduced to between five and six in a thousand.

The Public Health Act having been passed in 1875, the death rate

in England among men fell, between 1871 and 1880, more than four

in a thousand, and among women more than six in a thousand.  In

the decade between 1851 and 1860 there died of diseases

attributable to defective drainage and impure water over four

thousand persons in every million throughout England:  these

numbers have declined until in 1888 there died less than two

thousand in every million. The most striking diminution of the

deaths from such causes was found in 1891, in the case of typhoid

fever, that diminution being fifty per cent.  As to the scourge

which, next to plagues like the Black Death, was formerly the

most dreaded--smallpox--there died of it in London during the

year 1890 just one person.  Drainage in Bristol reduced the death

rate by consumption from 4.4 to 2.3; at Cardiff, from 3.47 to

2.31; and in all England and Wales, from 2.68 in 1851 to 1.55 in

1888.



What can be accomplished by better sanitation is also seen to-day

by a comparison between the death rate among the children outside

and inside the charity schools.  The death rate among those

outside in 1881 was twelve in a thousand; while inside, where

the children were under sanitary regulations maintained by

competent authorities, it has been brought down first to eight,

then to four, and finally to less than three in a thousand.



In view of statistics like these, it becomes clear that Edwin

Chadwick and his compeers among the sanitary authorities have in

half a century done far more to reduce the rate of disease and

death than has been done in fifteen hundred years by all the

fetiches which theological reasoning could devise or

ecclesiastical power enforce.



Not less striking has been the history of hygiene in France:

thanks to the decline of theological control over the

universities, to the abolition of monasteries, and to such

labours in hygienic research and improvement as those of Tardieu,

Levy, and Bouchardat, a wondrous change has been wrought in

public health.  Statistics carefully kept show that the mean

length of human life has been remarkably increased.  In the

eighteenth century it was but twenty-three years; from 1825 to

1830 it was thirty-two years and eight months; and since 1864,

thirty-seven years and six months.







IV.  THE RELATION OF SANITARY SCIENCE TO RELIGION.





The question may now arise whether this progress in sanitary

science has been purchased at any real sacrifice of religion in

its highest sense.  One piece of recent history indicates an

answer to this question.  The Second Empire in France had its

head in Napoleon III, a noted Voltairean.  At the climax of his

power he determined to erect an Academy of Music which should be

the noblest building of its kind.  It was projected on a scale

never before known, at least in modern times, and carried on for

years, millions being lavished upon it.  At the same time the

emperor determined to rebuild the Hotel-Dieu, the great Paris

hospital; this, too, was projected on a greater scale than

anything of the kind ever before known, and also required

millions.  But in the erection of these two buildings the

emperor's determination was distinctly made known, that with the

highest provision for aesthetic enjoyment there should be a

similar provision, moving on parallel lines, for the relief of

human suffering.  This plan was carried out to the letter:  the

Palace of the Opera and the Hotel-Dieu went on with equal steps,

and the former was not allowed to be finished before the latter.

Among all the "most Christian kings" of the house of Bourbon who

had preceded him for five hundred years, history shows no such

obedience to the religious and moral sense of the nation.

Catharine de' Medici and her sons, plunging the nation into the

great wars of religion, never showed any such feeling; Louis XIV,

revoking the Edict of Nantes for the glory of God, and bringing

the nation to sorrow during many generations, never dreamed of

making the construction of his palaces and public buildings wait

upon the demands of charity.  Louis XV, so subservient to the

Church in all things, never betrayed the slightest consciousness

that, while making enormous expenditures to gratify his own and

the national vanity, he ought to carry on works, pari passu, for

charity.  Nor did the French nation, at those periods when it was

most largely under the control of theological considerations,

seem to have any inkling of the idea that nation or monarch

should make provision for relief from human suffering, to justify

provision for the sumptuous enjoyment of art:  it was reserved

for the second half of the nineteenth century to develop this

feeling so strongly, though quietly, that Napoleon III,

notoriously an unbeliever in all orthodoxy, was obliged to

recognise it and to set this great example.



Nor has the recent history of the United States been less

fruitful in lessons.  Yellow fever, which formerly swept not only

Southern cities but even New York and Philadelphia, has now been

almost entirely warded off.  Such epidemics as that in Memphis a

few years since, and the immunity of the city from such

visitations since its sanitary condition was changed by Mr.

Waring, are a most striking object lesson to the whole country.

Cholera, which again and again swept the country, has ceased to

be feared by the public at large.  Typhus fever, once so deadly,

is now rarely heard of.  Curious is it to find that some of the

diseases which in the olden time swept off myriads on myriads in

every country, now cause fewer deaths than some diseases thought

of little account, and for the cure of which people therefore

rely, to their cost, on quackery instead of medical science.



This development of sanitary science and hygiene in the United

States has also been coincident with a marked change in the

attitude of the American pulpit as regards the theory of disease.

In this country, as in others, down to a period within living

memory, deaths due to want of sanitary precautions were

constantly dwelt upon in funeral sermons as "results of national

sin," or as "inscrutable Providences."  That view has mainly

passed away among the clergy of the more enlightened parts of the

country, and we now find them, as a rule, active in spreading

useful ideas as to the prevention of disease.  The religious

press has been especially faithful in this respect, carrying to

every household more just ideas of sanitary precautions and

hygienic living.



The attitude even of many among the most orthodox rulers in

church and state has been changed by facts like these.  Lord

Palmerston refusing the request of the Scotch clergy that a fast

day be appointed to ward off cholera, and advising them to go

home and clean their streets,--the devout Emperor William II

forbidding prayer-meetings in a similar emergency, on the ground

that they led to neglect of practical human means of help,--all

this is in striking contrast to the older methods.



Well worthy of note is the ground taken in 1893, at Philadelphia,

by an eminent divine of the Protestant Episcopal Church.  The

Bishop of Pennsylvania having issued a special call to prayer in

order to ward off the cholera, this clergyman refused to respond

to the call, declaring that to do so, in the filthy condition of

the streets then prevailing in Philadelphia, would be

blasphemous.



In summing up the whole subject, we see that in this field, as in

so many others, the triumph of scientific thought has gradually

done much to evolve in the world not only a theology but also a

religious spirit more and more worthy of the goodness of God and

of the destiny of man.[340]



[340] On the improvement in sanitation in London and elsewhere in

the north of Europe, see the editorial and Report of the

Conference  on Sanitation at Brighton, given in the London Times

of August 27, 1888.  For the best authorities on the general

subject in England, see Sir John Simon on English Sanitary

Institutions, 1890; also his published Health Reports for 1887,

cited in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1891.  See also

Parkes's Hygiene, passim.  For the great increase in the mean

length of life in France under better hygienic conditions, see

Rambaud, La Civilisation contemporaine en France, p. 682.  For

the approach to depopulation at Memphis, under the cesspool

system in 1878, see Parkes, Hygiene, American appendix, p. 397.

For the facts brought out in the investigation of the department

of the city of New York by the Committee of the State Senate, of

which the present writer was a member, see New York Senate

Documents for 1865.  For decrease of death rate in New York city

under the new Board of Health, beginning in 1866, and especially

among children, see Buck, Hygiene and Popular Health, New York,

1879, vol. ii, p. 573; and for wise remarks on religious duties

during pestilence, see ibid., vol. ii, p. 579.  For a contrast

between the old and new ideas regarding pestilences, see Charles

Kingsley in Fraser's Magazine, vol. lviii, p. 134; also the

sermon of Dr. Burns, in 1875, at the Cathedral of Glasgow before

the Social Science Congress.  For a particularly bright and

valuable statement of the triumphs of modern sanitation, see Mrs.

Plunkett's article in The Popular Science Monthly for June, 1891.

For the reply of Lord Palmerston to the Scotch clergy, see the

well-known passage in Buckle.  For the order of the Emperor

William, see various newspapers for September, 1892, and

especially Public Opinion for September 24th.