6o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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

 even among the regular and secular ecclesiastics fled, he stood 

 by his nock : 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 sway of 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 the 

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

 seek the aid of physicians was, in the neighborhood of these mo- 

 nastic centers, very generally considered impious, and the enor- 

 mous death-rate in such neighborhoods 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 Calvin- 

 istic Scotland the only difference being that, while in Eoman 

 Catholic countries relief was sought by fetiches, gifts, proces- 

 sions, exorcisms, and works of expiation, promoted by priests ; in 

 Scotland, after the Reformation, it was sought in fast-days estab- 

 lished by Presbyterian elders. Accounts of the filthiness of Scotch 

 cities and villages, as well as of ordinary dwellings, 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 hand of man," checked scientific thought 

 and paralyzed sanitary endeavor. The result was natural : be- 

 tween the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries thirty notable 

 epidemics swept the country, and some of them carried off mul- 

 titudes; but as a rule these never suggested sanitary improve- 

 ment ; 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 



