10 



be transported with the sick to a distant and isolated place. Notwith- 

 standing all this, he does not mention the necessity for purification of 

 infected things nor ever suggest the caution of destroying f omites. 

 There can be no stronger evidence than this of the tenacity with which 

 the physicians of the middle ages adhered to the accepted doctrines of 

 their predecessors. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF RATIONAL ETIOLOGY. 



It took centuries of involuntary observation to shake the idea that 

 epidemics are of celestial origin and to be combated by prayers, fast- 

 ing, and processions. The first advances toward broader ideas were 

 not made by medical men. The record of reformed views is found in 

 works on jurisprudence and in the narratives of travelers. In the 

 books of jurisprudence of the emperors of the East it is noticed that 

 care should be exercised in having relations with persons arriving 

 from places where pest reigns. It was ordered, in consequence, that 

 those so exposed should be separated from others for the purpose of 

 observation. The term of forty days (whence the word quarantine) 

 is named, this being the supposed maximum period of the duration of 

 acute maladies. Whether this isolation was practiced in a particu- 

 larly selected place or in the houses of the suspects is not known. 



Merchants traveling in the East and detained at Alexandria or Cairo 

 during the prevalence of pest observed that cloistered monks did not 

 contract the disease. Many of these merchants, exiled by pestilence, 

 staid constantly within the boundaries of their residences, transacting 

 all business through barred windows and from terraces that crowned 

 the house tops. The stubbornness with which medical men held to 

 the doctrine of aerial corruption of celestial origin is shown by the 

 report made to the Marseille government in 1720 by a body of dis- 

 tinguished physicians, in which the condition of the air was pronounced 

 to be the sole cause of pest, the idea of communicability from man to 

 man being absolutely rejected. 



One of the most ancient edicts commanding the segregation of suf- 

 ferers from pestilential maladies had for its authors two laymen, 

 Sagacio and Pietro de Gazata, and is found in the chronicles of Reggio 

 d'Emilia. The document, dated 1374 and written in low Latin, orders 

 that all persons sick with pest be taken outside the city, into the open 

 country, a camp, or the woods, there to remain until dead or cured. 

 The parish priests are required to promptly report all cases of pest 

 under pain of death by fire. After registering these historical facts, 

 the chronicler adds: 



And I saw in this same year that these orders were observed in Eeggio, for which 

 cause all were grieved and terrified more than by the fear of the illness which, when 

 God permits, can not be averted. 



