20 HISTORICAL REVIEW 



A doctrine quite as old, but with a smaller following at present, 

 taught that all the joys and ills of man are determined by the position 

 of the heavenly bodies. Even within the present generation there are 

 those who believe that famine, war and pestilence are determined by 

 the spots on the sun or by the juxtaposition of certain planets. Our 

 great lexicographer, Noah Webster, wrote a book to prove that epi- 

 demics are due to earthquakes and other terrestrial disturbances. 



Hippocrates taught that epidemics are due to a pestilential condi- 

 tion of the air. This theory dominated the medical profession for 

 more than two thousand years, and still colors some of our conceptions 

 of infection. Quite naturally, such a theory is liable to many modifi- 

 cations. How does the air become pestilential? This question has 

 been answered in numberless ways. Some say it is made so by evil 

 spirits; by an angered God; by the influence of heavenly bodies; by 

 terrestrial disturbances ; by prevailing winds ; by emanations from earth 

 or water; etc. It is natural for man to believe in the evil genius of 

 the locality in which ills befall him. In 1898, intelligent army officers 

 told with bated breath that the word "Chickamauga" means river of 

 death. They believed that the epidemic of typhoid there prevalent 

 was due in part, at least, to the miasm of the locality and the disease 

 was called "Chickamauga fever." The word malaria (mal aria) owes 

 its origin to this theory. In war, unburied bodies of men and animals 

 were supposed to fill the air with deadly decomposition products. It 

 was fear of this that secured burial of the numerous victims of the 

 plague in the great epidemics of the middle ages. This fear had, in 

 part at least, a religious basis, and burial was regarded not only as 

 a necessary sanitary measure, but as a compliance with a divine com- 

 mand. The unburied dead became a reproach to the living ; from the 

 decomposing body noxious and fatal emanations polluted the surround- 

 ing air, and with this threatening weapon, the dead demanded the 

 honor of Christian burial. 



Lowlands and swamps were supposed to be places in which noxious 

 vapors were generated and from which they spread, poisoning the air 

 of the surrounding country. These localities were shunned, especially 

 after sunset, and the fear of breathing night air became well nigh 

 universal. We now know that the real truth in this belief was made 



