38 THE CONTAGIOUS TYPHUS 



with this typhus, sold the flesh for meat to 

 some soldiers of the Eegiment Eoyal Baviere, 

 then garrisoned in one of the towns of 

 Languedoc. All those who partook of this 

 meat were seized with diarrhoea, dysentery, 

 and fever, and several of the sick soldiers 

 very nearly died. The butcher, whose avarice 

 had caused all this mischief, had richly deserved 

 some exemplary punishment, and some of the 

 sufferers proposed that he should be hanged 

 outright, but the majority, more clement, sen- 

 tenced him to be beaten black and blue with 

 horsewhips. 



The popular saying, when the beast is dead 

 the poison is dead, being generally true, the 

 virulence of the contagion, in the above 

 instances, possessed venomous properties of an 

 exceptional character, for if every sick animal 

 slaughtered by the butchers and sold to the 

 consumers, or those which had been flayed for 

 the sake of the skin, had contained so murder- 

 ous a virus in their tissues, the number of 

 victims to the contagion among the human 

 species would have been appalling. And in 

 that case, too, similar sacrifices would be wit- 

 nessed at present, for it cannot be doubted 



