6 PHARMACEUTICAL BACTERIOLOGY 



from the air, from water, stagnant pools, marshes, from decaying and 

 putrescent substances, from crowded habitations, army camps, etc. The 

 common people throughout the world and throughout all ages have held 

 the belief that pestilence and disease was the manifestation of divine or 

 supernatural influence, the judgment of an angry deity, a punishment 

 inflicted on mankind for their sins and. iniquities, beliefs which are oc- 

 casionally asserted even at the present time. Changes of season, climatic 

 conditions, and the influence of heavenly bodies were also considered as 

 causative of diseases of an epidemic nature. 



Animals, such as rats, mice, and insects, have long been recognized as 

 possible carriers of disease. An English investigator has recently dis- 

 covered some very excellent sanitary rules in the Vedas of the Hindus. 

 The following is a translation from Book VI, verse 50, of the Atharva- 

 Veda. 



"Destroy the rat, the mole, Ihe boring beetle; cut off their heads, O asvins. 



"Bind fast their mouths; let them not eat our barley; so guard ye twain our growing 

 corn from danger. 



" Hearken to me, lord of the female borer, lord of the female grub ! Ye rough-toothed 

 vermin. 



"Whate'er ye be, dwelling in woods, and piercing, we crush and mangle all those 

 piercing insects." 



By "piercing insects" no doubt mosquitos are meant. If the injunc- 

 tions were literally obeyed, plague, malaria, and certain protozoic diseases 

 would be abolished from India. 



Hippocrates (460-377 B. C.), the father of medicine, considered seasons 

 and winds as the cause of pestilence, particularly the long continued south- 

 erly winds (for Greece), and a warm, humid, clouded atmosphere. Galen 

 (130-220 A. D.) held similar beliefs. He declared that diseases arose from 

 a putridity of the air or from atmospheric and weather conditions. Mar- 

 cellinus (359 A. D.), a warrior as well as philosopher and historian, declared 

 that the decomposing bodies left on the battlefield were the cause of "pesti- 

 lential distempers," also caused by extremes in weather, by marsh effluvias, 

 violent heat, and a vitiated atmosphere. Aetius (fifth century), an emi- 

 nent physician, declared that epidemics or common diseases were caused 

 by bad food, bad water, immoderate grief, hunger, excesses, particularly 

 abundance following extreme want, lack of exercise, excessive humidity, 

 and putrid substances. Alpinus, a Venetian physician of the sixteenth 

 century, explained how the cause of plagues and epidemics may be carried 

 by persons or in cargoes. He pointed out that a given disease from one 

 country is more malignant than the same disease from another country. 

 During the dark and middle ages various ecclesiastical and lay writers 

 ascribed epidemics and pestilence to a variety of causes the wrath of 



