ADDITIONAL NOTES ON CONTAGION. 261 



vol. It p. 820.) or amaurosis at Modena, according to Ramazzini, in either case there is 

 ample proof that they cannot be productive of putrid or pestilential fevers." 



" Clavigero, on the authority of Torquemado, says, that at the dedication of the great 

 temple of Mexico, anno 1486, 72,344 human beings, prisoners taken in war for the pur- 

 pose, were sacrificed to the Mexican gods ; and that a petty king, or lord, about the same 

 time, in imitation of his master, the emperor, sacrificed many thousands on a similar 

 occasion. On the erection of the great altar at Mexico, more than 12,000 were offered 

 up : — and the annual average of human creatures thus disposed of, amounted to 20,000, 

 beside a prodigious number of quadrupeds and birds. Notwithstanding this dreadful 

 waste of human blood — and notwithstanding the horrible stench always present in this 

 quarter of Mexico, the diseases, among an immense population, some say six millions in the 

 city alone, were trifling, and proceeded almost altogether from marsh miasmata. The 

 bodies of the victims were precipitated to the bottom of the steps of the altar, there 

 to putrefy ; or were sometimes ate by the Mexicans ; and a pond of water, situated close 

 to the great temple, was continually tinged by the blood of the sacrifices. (See History 

 of Mexico, vol. 1. p. 201. 232. 281. 426. See, also, Herrara, decade, 3. c. 16.; 

 Prevost's Voyages, #c.) The prodigious sacrifice of peace offerings, made by Solomon 

 at the dedication of the temple of Jerusalem, may be compared, 1 Kings, viii. 63. 



" The annals of Dahomy furnish numerous illustrations of the foregoing remark ; a 

 nation whose kings delighted in blood, who wanted heads, not slaves, to garnish their 

 palaces continually stained with human gore, and whose ' annual customs' presented to 

 the terrified European many thousand human beings, sacrificed to the manes of their an- 

 cestors—a barbarous oblation, founded on the wildest and most savage superstition, deno- 

 minated by them, ' the watering the graves of the deceased royal family.' There are 

 some remarkable instances of the savage cruelty of these natives of Guinea, given by 

 Governor Dalzel, in his History of Dahomy, in which, if pestilence could be the produce 

 of the putrefaction of animal bodies, we should expect to hear of the most direful pesti- 

 lential epidemics ; but in which no such result is even noticed. < It being now noon, 

 they sat down to dinner on the ham and fowls they had brought with them ; but were so 

 annoyed by flies, they could scarce put a morsel into their mouths, without taking in 

 some of these vermin with it. They little thought whence this nuisance proceeded, else 

 tlicy would have made a much shorter dinner; nor was it till about 3" o'clock, when, be- 

 ing desired by a messenger from the great captain, to come to the king's gate, that on 

 their way they perceived, with no small degree of disgust and horror, two heaps of dead 

 mens* heads, piled up on two large stages, and covered with swarms of their late visiters, 

 the flies. The interpreter told them, * they were the heads of four thousand of the Why- 



