2 3 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ber lie writes to Lady Carteret, " I have stayed in the city till 

 above seventy-four hundred died in one week, and of them about 

 six thousand of the plague, and little noise heard day or night but 

 tolling of bells." 



The meetings were renewed again March 14, 1666. As was to 

 be expected, we find that the medical Fellows had some report to 

 make of their studies of such a direful disease. In consideration 

 of the present agitation of the germ theory of disease, it is inter- 

 esting to find recorded that " Dr. Charlton advanced his notion 

 concerning the vermigation of the air as the cause of the plague, 

 first started in England by Sir George Ent, and Dr. Bacon in 

 Rome. It had been observed that there was a kind of insect in 

 the air, which, being put upon a man's hand, would lay eggs 

 hardly discernible without a microscope, which eggs being for an 

 experiment given to be snuffed up by a dog, the dog fell into a 

 distemper, accompanied with all the symptoms of the plague." 



September 5, 1666. The journal has this passage : " The society 

 could not meet by reason of the late dreadfull Fire in London." 



The calamity of the many is often the opportunity for the few. 

 The flames which brought such loss and suffering upon London, 

 swept away all obstacles to the making of England's greatest archi- 

 tect. In the ashes of St. Paul's Wren found his opportunity and 

 fame. Up to this time architecture had been but one of many of 

 the studies of Sir Christopher. Even when a gentleman-common- 

 er at Oxford he was noted for his attainments and inventions in 

 mathematical and experimental philosophy. Mathematics, as- 

 tronomy, chemistry, and anatomy shared with architecture in his 

 attention, and such was his skill in them all that Evelyn styled 

 him " that rare and early prodigy of universal science." 



Wren was one of the founders of the Royal Society, and was 

 at one time Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, where the 

 society first met. It has been justly observed that, " but for the 

 fire, Wren might have trifled away his genius, patching the old 

 cathedral, and perhaps adding a new wing to Whitehall." But 

 fortunately the fire found him still young, being but thirty-three, 

 and in the nearly threescore years still allotted him to labor, he 

 industriously followed his chosen science. Besides fifty-odd 

 churches, Wren designed and built the Royal Exchange, Custom- 

 House, Royal Observatory, College of Physicians, Greenwich Hos- 

 pital, Buckingham House, Marlborough House, the towers of the 

 west front of Westminster Abbey, and many other noble struct- 

 ures. But the crowning work of his life was his remodeling and 

 rebuilding St. Paul's, which is esteemed the finest specimen of its 

 order in the world. Wren's salary as architect of this master- 

 piece was less than a thousand dollars per annum, for which he was 

 not only architect but draughtsman, overseer, contractor, and audi- 



