\6z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fifty-eight persons died of it throughout all Denmark. In Vienna, 

 where the average yearly mortality from this disease had been 

 over eight hundred, it was steadily and rapidly reduced, until in 

 1803 it had fallen to less than thirty ; and in London, formerly so 

 afflicted by this scourge, out of all her inhabitants there died of it 

 in 1890 but one. As to the world at large the result is summed 

 up by one of the most honored English physicians of our time in 

 the declaration that " Jenner has saved, is now saving, and will 

 continue to save in all coming ages, more lives in one generation 

 than were destroyed in all the wars of Napoleon." 



It will have been noticed by those who have read this history 

 thus far that the record of the Church generally was far more 

 honorable in this struggle than in many which preceded it : the 

 reason is not difficult to find ; the decline of theology inured to the 

 advantage of religion, and religion gave powerful aid to science. 



Yet there have remained some survivals in both branches of 

 the Western Church which may be regarded with curiosity. A 

 small body of perversely ingenious minds in the medical profes- 

 sion in England have found a few ardent allies among the less 

 intellectual clergy. The Rev. Mr. Rothery and the Rev. Mr. 

 Allen, of the Primitive Methodists, have for sundry vague theo- 

 logical or metaphysical reasons especially distinguished them- 

 selves by opposition to compulsory vaccination; but it is only 

 just to say that the great body of the clergy have at last taken 

 the better view. 



Far more painful has been the recent history of the other 

 great branch of the Christian Church a history developed where 

 it might have been least expected ; the recent annals of the world 

 hardly present a more striking antithesis between Religion and 

 Theology. 



On the religious side few things in the history of the Roman 

 Church have been so beautiful as the conduct of its clergy in 

 Canada during the great outbreak of ship-fever among immi- 

 grants at Montreal about the middle of the present century. Day 

 and night the Catholic clergy of that city ministered fearlessly 

 to those victims of sanitary ignorance ; fear of suffering and death 

 could not drive these ministers from their work ; they laid down 

 their lives cheerfully while carrying comfort to the poorest and 

 most ignorant of our kind : such was the record of their religion. 

 But in 1885 a record was made by their theological spirit : in that 

 year the small-pox broke out with great virulence at Montreal. 

 The Protestant population escaped almost entirely by vaccina- 

 tion, but multitudes of their Catholic fellow-citizens, under some 

 vague survival of the old orthodox ideas, refused vaccination and 

 suffered fearfully. When at last the plague became so serious 

 that travel and trade fell off greatly and quarantine began to be 



