72 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The horrors of the plague of the fourteenth century have been 

 depicted by Hecker and others. The moral depravity brought to 

 light by this great epidemic is hardly credible. Many believed 

 themselves poisoned, and suspicion fell upon the Jews, who have 

 so often been treated by Christians with barbaric cruelty. Under 

 the torture confessions were made, and then began the whole- 

 sale slaughter of the children of Abraham. In Basle, the whole 

 Jewish population was brought together in a wooden building 

 constructed for the purpose and burned. "At Strasburg two 

 thousand Jews were burned alive in their own burial ground. 

 ... At Eslingen the whole Jewish community burned them- 

 selves in their synagogue ; and mothers were often seen throw- 

 ing their children on the pile to prevent their being baptized, 

 and then precipitating themselves into the flames. ... In all the 

 countries on the Rhine these cruelties continued to be perpe- 

 trated during the succeeding months; and after quiet was in 

 some degree restored, the people thought to render an acceptable 

 service to God by taking the bricks of the destroyed dwellings 

 and the tombstones of the Jews to repair churches and to erect 

 belfries." 



Knowing, as we now do, the specific cause of the plague, we 

 may easily predicate the modes of its distribution. Anything 

 that carries the bacillus may be an agent of its transmission from 

 one person to another, or from one country to another. It is need- 

 less to dwell upon this point. 



Is there danger of the plague being imported to this coun- 

 try ? Yes, there is danger, but this being foreseen may be eas- 

 ily avoided. Thorough inspection of persons and disinfection 

 of things from infected districts will keep the disease out of 

 Europe and America. Only by the most gross carelessness could 

 the plague be permitted to enter either of these continents. The 

 method of disinfecting the mails from the Orient, as practiced 

 by the English, is wholly inadequate, and the American authori- 

 ties should redisinfect all such matter coming from the infected 

 districts of India. 



ON the occasion of the opening of the Davy Faraday Research Labora- 

 tory at the Royal Institution, London, Dr. Ludwig Mond observed that if 

 Great Britain had distinguished itself in one way more than another in 

 that glorious rivalry with other nations for extending our knowledge of 

 natural phenomena and our power over the forces of Nature, it had been 

 by the large number of contributors to our knowledge who on the Conti- 

 nent would be called amateurs in science men who devoted their lives to 

 the study and advancement of science from pure love of the subject. He 

 need only instance the names of Cavendish, Joule, and Darwin to say that 

 they included men of the very highest rank. 



