606 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Gradually it dawned both upon Catholic and Protestant coun- 

 tries that, if any sin be punished by pestilence, it is the sin of 

 filthiness ; more and more it began to be seen by thinking men of 

 both religions that Wesley's great dictum stated even less than 

 the truth ; that not only was " cleanliness akin to godliness," but 

 that, as a means of keeping off pestilence, it was far superior to 

 godliness as godliness was then generally understood.* 



The recent history of sanitation in all civilized countries 

 shows triumphs which may well fill us with wonder, did there 

 not rise within us a far greater wonder that they were so long de- 

 layed. Amazing is it to see how near the world has come again 

 and again to discovering the key to the cause and cure of pesti- 

 lence. It is now a matter of the simplest elementary knowledge 

 that some of the worst epidemics are conveyed in water. But 

 this fact seems to have been discovered many times in human 

 history. In the Peloponnesian war the Greeks asserted that their 

 enemies had poisoned their cisterns ; in the middle ages the 

 people generally declared that the Jews had poisoned their wells ; 

 and as late as the cholera of 1832 the Parisian mob charged the 

 water-carriers who distributed water for drinking purposes from 

 the Seine, polluted as it was by sewage, with poisoning the water, 

 and in some cases murdered them for it ; so far did this feeling 

 go, that locked covers were sometimes placed upon the water- 

 buckets. Had not such men as Roger Bacon and his long line 

 of successors been thwarted by theological authority had not 

 such men as Thomas Aquinas, Vincent de Beauvais, and Albert 

 the Great been drawn or driven from the paths of science into the 

 dark, tortuous paths of theology, leading nowhither, the world 

 to-day, at the end of the nineteenth century, would have arrived 

 at the solution of great problems and the enjoyment of great 

 results which will only be reached at the end of the twentieth 

 century, and even in generations more remote. Diseases like pul- 

 monary consumption, scarlet fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, and 

 la grippe, which now carry off so many most precious lives, 

 would have long since ceased to scourge the world. 



Still, there is one great cause for joy : the law governing the 

 relation of theology to disease is now well before the world, and it 

 is seen in the striking fact that just in proportion as the world 

 progressed from the sway of Hippocrates to that of the ages of 

 faith, so it progressed in the frequency and severity of great pes- 

 tilences ; and, on the other hand, just in proportion as the world 

 has receded from that period when theology was all-pervading 

 and all-controlling, plague after plague has disappeared, and 



* For Boyle's attempt at compromise, see Discourse on the Air, in his works, vol. iv, 

 pp. 288, 289, cited by Buckle, vol. i, pp. 128, 129, note. 



