6 PHARMACEUTICAL BACTERIOLOGY. 



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 occasionally 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 epi- 

 demic nature. 



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

 possible carriers of disease. An English investigator has recently discovered 

 some very excellent sanitary rules in the Vedas of the Hindus. The follow- 

 ing is a translation from Book VI, verse 50, of the Atharva-Veda. 



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



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

 com 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 injunctions 

 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 batdefield 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 eminent 

 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 sub- 

 stances. 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 God, to demons or evil spirits, 

 comets, meteors, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones, eclipses of the 

 sun, terrific storms, wars, famines, great fires, etc. Even as late as 1799 ' 



