NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 603 



will utterly dissolve All tlie Vital Tyes within us ; Ev'n as an 

 Aqua Fortis, made with a conjunction of Nitre and Vitriol, Cor- 

 rodes what it Siezes upon. And when the Divel has raised those 

 Arsenical Fumes, which become Venomous Quivers full of Terri- 

 ble Arrows, how easily can he shoot the deleterious Miasms into 

 those Juices or Bowels of Mens 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 Dis- 

 guised Plagues among us, Causing Epidemical Desolations " (pp. 

 17 and 18). 



Mather gives several instances of witches causing diseases, 

 and speaks of " some long Bow'd down under such a Spirit of In- 

 firmity/' being " Marvelously Recovered upon the Death of the 

 Witches," of which he gives an instance. He also gives an in- 

 stance 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." * 



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 plundering the dead and 

 assassinating the dying; 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 honor 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 Bel- 

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

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



* For the passages cited from Increase Mather, see in his book as cited, pp. 17, 18, also 

 134, 145. Johnson's History of New England, published in London in 1654, 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 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 Massachu- 

 setts Historical Society's Collection, second series, vol. i, p. 67. 



