6oz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 : among other evidences of saint- 

 ship he visited the prisons of England, made known their condi- 

 tion to the world, and never rested until they were greatly im- 

 proved. 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 mod- 

 ern civilization was removed.* 



The same thing was seen in the Protestant colonies of Amer- 

 ica ; 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 Increase Mather's "Wonders 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 trou- 

 bles 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 Malig- 

 nant Salts, as meeting with the Salt of our Microcosm, shall im- 

 mediately cast us into that Fermentation and Putrefaction, which 



* For Erasmus, see the letter cited in Bascome, History of Epidemic Pestilences, 

 London, 1851. For 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. 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 1S49, vol. ix, p. 107 et seq. For the 

 London 'plague as a punishment for Sabbath-breaking, see A divine Tragedie lately acted, 

 A collection of sundrie memorable examples of God's judgements upon Sabbath Breakers 

 and other like libertines, etc. By that 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 Lon- 

 don 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. 



