A REJOINDER 149 



Japanese, who adapt the structure of their houses to 

 the rigid requirements of earthquake mechanics ? 



Cannot we say the same of that which, in the 

 medical language of our peculiar and overwrought 

 time, is described as " a great scourge," " a terrible 

 curse," a " devourer of millions of people " ? I 

 allude to the plague. It looks a malign disease 

 upon the surface, but let us get deeper than these 

 sanitary conceptions created by the growing army 

 of sanitary officials, to the biological foundation 

 upon which all these questions rest, and see if there is 

 not something at least which we can call benign ? 

 Plague is a disease essentially associated with dirt ; 

 to-day it ravages those villages of India in which the 

 subsoil is the product of generations of offal and 

 domestic excrementa. In such a soil, the inter- 

 mediate host of the plague bacillus, the black rat, 

 lives. Clear away the soil, and with its removal or 

 destruction that of the vermin which flourish upon 

 it follow in its wake. Suppose the natives, whose 

 inherently inartistic instincts allowed this subsoil 

 to accumulate, will not or cannot be taught to 

 voluntarily clear their villages of it and maintain 

 a cleaner state of things, are protected against 

 themselves by an organised staff, paid for by Govern- 

 ment monies wrested from the cleaner citizens, 

 are we thereby achieving good or evil ? Let us en- 

 quire what it is we are really doing. Here in these 

 villages, races have existed and propagated every 

 generation, for many centuries. Throughout that 

 period dirt has been the condition which their 



