706 The Sanitary Millennium. [November, 
intense cold which survive in tradition as “ old-fashioned 
winters.”* 
Dr. Parkin also holds that whilst the pestilential epochs 
are marked not merely by physical but by mental diseases 
and by delusions, the non-pestilential epoch is characterised 
by an awakening from errors and superstitions. He writes : 
— “ The mists which had so long obscured the human intel- 
lect, particularly during the Dark and Middle Ages, became 
suddenly removed. ... It was then also that the glorious 
galaxy of intellectual stars made their appearance— Galileo, 
Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Bacon, Locke, Shakespeare, 
Milton! Dante, Moliere, Corneille, Goethe, and a host of 
philosophical and scientific writers to whom we are indebted 
for those great discoveries that have enriched the present 
century.” 
We are by no means disposed to deny that a pestilential 
epoch may be fertile in delusions, a subject to which we 
may return below. But the great French revolution which, 
with its attendant wars, entirely belongs to the non-pesti- 
lential epoch (1750 to 1830) was rich in delusions. With 
the “ intellectual stars” above enumerated we feel per- 
plexed. We do not see how any of the names mentioned, 
with the single exception of Goethe, can be considered to 
belong to the “ non-pestilential epoch.” 
In support of the view that we have entered upon a new 
period of epidemics the author adduces as evidence the 
appearance of cholera, of which we have had three succes- 
sive visitations, the recrudescence of small-pox, the advent 
of diphtheria, the prevalence of typhoid, the increase of 
carbuncle, typhus, scarlet fever, and diarrhoea, the recent 
epizootics, rinderpest, foot and mouth disease, the increase 
of rabies, and the maladies among vegetables, such as the 
vine the potato, and we may add the coffee tree. Delu- 
sions are also growing apace— Dr. Parkin selects as an 
instance ritualism, a subject which does not lie within our 
limits. He might perhaps have here brought forward vege- 
* Here again, we must make a reservation. According to White, the frost 
of 1768 was the “ most intense that we had then known for many years, and 
was attended by an epidemic among horses.” The winter of 1771 was long and 
severe the snow lying for eight weeks in the island of Skye, where snow 
seldom lies at all. In the spring following most of the cows were barren, the 
sheep perished for want of food and the grass did not grow. In 1776 the roads 
i n the west of England were blocked up with snow ; at Selborne the ther- 
mometer fell to 7 0 and 6° Fahr., and in Kent to -*> The summer of 1783 is 
described as “ amazing and portentous.” A reddish fog covered all Europe 
for weeks, irrespective of changes of the wind. Calabria and Sicily suffered 
from earthquakes, and thunderstorms were unusually violent and numerous. 
