xxiv Introduction, 



or spiteful Creator is still appealed to by prayers, ceremonies, and sacri- 

 fices to remove the devastating pestilence that revels amid indolence<i 

 bigotry, filth, and impurity. It is generally so much easier to pray than 

 to obey sanitary behests. Laziness and priestcraft; would rather believe 

 in the vengeance of an Almighty power than in the troublesome causes 

 which need active exertion and enlightened minds for their removal 

 or prevention. In the middle of the 19th century processions of 

 Greek and Turkish priests stream barefooted through the plague-swept 

 streets of Constantinople, the former uttering loud appeals for deHverance 

 from the scourge, and the latter calling upon Allah to protect them, 

 though they are opposing the most urgent sanitary measures as contrary 

 to the teachings of the Koran ; all the while the two perplexed sects, 

 in their dismal peregrinations, can scarcely breathe for the putrifying 

 matters surrounding them, through which they have to scramble as 

 they best can, and which is directly or indirectly slaying its thousands 

 of the benighted population.' About the same period, in our own 

 land, a dreadftil contagion is decimating the herds and flocks j physicians 

 prescribe impotent medical treatment 5 fast-days are appointed, and 

 prayers are otfered for riddance of the disease, for whose advent 

 various reasons are given, but which are generally on a par with those 

 of the early period of civilization. The imported ' Cattle Plague ' in 

 Britain is 'attributed by a learned priest (a Roman Cathohc) directly to 

 God's displeasure at our great love for animals, or 'cattle worship,' as 

 he terms it j and he hesitates not to say of his own species, ' Perhaps 

 the cholera is now sent to bring down the pride of the human intellect, 

 and to compel the godless philosophy of the age to admire the inter- 

 vention of the hand of God in all human events.' - In the mean time, 

 all that is necessary is a little energy and wisdom on the part of states- 

 men and people to get rid of a contagion that is readily preventible, and 

 that should never have been allowed to appear, and at any rate to 

 spread. 



But we must not be too hard upon the enlightened bishop for de- 

 claring that kindness to animals, which we have always considered a 

 virtue, and looked upon as a part of Scriptural injunction, should be 

 visited with punishment not on sinful man but on the innocent rumin- 

 ants. During the same visitation the most extraordinary opinions have 

 been emitted by preachers of another rdigious sect. One of these 

 worthies in particular traced the origin of the malady to our national, 



' See Times' Correspondent's letter from Constantinople, dated September 1st, 

 1865. 



- Dr Ciillcn. On the Approach of the Cholera Morbus and other Evils, 1865. 



