2.14. FROM FETICH TO HYGIENE.
THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF EPIDEMICS
AND SANITATION.
A VERY striking feature in recorded history has been the
recurrence of great pestilences. Various indications in ancient
times show their frequency, while the famous description of the
plague of Athens given by Thucydides, and the discussion of it by
Lucretius, exemplify their severity. In the Middle Ages they
raged from time to time throughout Europe: such plagues as the
Black Death and the sweating sickness swept off vast multitudes,
the best authorities estimating that of the former, at the middle
of the fourteenth century, more than half the population of
England died, and that twenty-five millions of people perished in
various parts of Europe. In 1552 sixty-seven thousand patients
died of the plague at Paris alone, and in 1580 more than twenty
thousand. The great plague in England and other parts of Europe
in the seventeenth century was also fearful, and that which swept
the south of Europe in the early part of the eighteenth century,
as well as the invasions by the cholera at various times during
the nineteenth, while less terrible than those of former years,
have left a deep impress upon the imaginations of men.
From the earliest records we find such pestilences attributed
to the wrath or malice of unseen powers. This had been the
prevailing view even in the most cultured ages before the
establishment of Christianity: in Greece and Rome especially,
plagues of various sorts were attributed to the wrath of the
gods; in Judea, the scriptural records of various plagues sent
upon the earth by the Divine fiat as a punishment for sin show
the continuance of this mode of thought. Among many examples
and intimations of this in our sacred literature, we have the
epidemic which carried off fourteen thousand seven hundred of the
children of Israel, and which was only stayed by the prayers and
offerings of Aaron, the high priest; the destruction of seventy
thousand men in the pestilence by which King David was punished
for the numbering of Israel, and which was only stopped when the
wrath of Jahveh was averted by burnt-offerings; the plague
threatened by the prophet Zechariah, and that delineated in the
Apocalypse. From these sources this current of ideas was poured
into the early Christian Church, and hence it has been that
during nearly twenty centuries since the rise of Christianity,
and down to a period within living memory, at the appearance of
any pestilence the Church authorities, instead of devising
sanitary measures, have very generally preached the necessity of
immediate atonement for offences against the Almighty.
This view of the early Church was enriched greatly by a new
development of theological thought regarding the powers of Satan
and evil angels, the declaration of St. Paul that the gods of
antiquity were devils being cited as its sufficient warrant.
Moreover, comets, falling stars, and earthquakes were
thought, upon scriptural authority, to be "signs and wonders"—
evidences of the Divine wrath, heralds of fearful visitations;
and this belief, acting powerfully upon the minds of millions,
did much to create a panic-terror sure to increase epidemic
disease wherever it broke forth.
The main cause of this immense sacrifice of life is now
known to have been the want of hygienic precaution, both in the
Eastern centres, where various plagues were developed, and in the
European towns through which they spread. And here certain
theological reasonings came in to resist the evolution of a
proper sanitary theory. Out of the Orient had been poured into
the thinking of western Europe the theological idea that the
abasement of man adds to the glory of God; that indignity to the
body may secure salvation to the soul; hence, that cleanliness
betokens pride and filthiness humility. Living in filth was
regarded by great numbers of holy men, who set an example to the
Church and to society, as an evidence of sanctity. St. Jerome and
the Breviary of the Roman Church dwell with unction on the fact
that St. Hilarion lived his whole life long in utter physical
uncleanliness; St. Athanasius glorifies St. Anthony because he
had never washed his feet; St. Abraham's most striking evidence
of holiness was that for fifty years he washed neither his hands
nor his feet; St. Sylvia never washed any part of her body save
her fingers; St. Euphraxia belonged to a convent in which the
nuns religiously abstained from bathing. St. Mary of Egypt was
emninent for filthiness; St. Simnon Stylites was in this respect
unspeakable—the least that can be said is, that he lived in
ordure and stench intolerable to his visitors. The Lives of the
Saints dwell with complacency on the statement that, when sundry
Eastern monks showed a disposition to wash themselves, the
Almighty manifested his displeasure by drying up a neighbouring
stream until the bath which it had supplied was destroyed.
The religious world was far indeed from the inspired utterance
attributed to John Wesley, that "cleanliness is near akin
to godliness." For century after century the idea prevailed
that filthiness was akin to holiness; and, while we may well
believe that the devotion of the clergy to the sick was one cause
why, during the greater plagues, they lost so large a proportion
of their numbers, we can not escape the conclusion that their
want of cleanliness had much to do with it. In France, during the
fourteenth century, Guy de Chauliac, the great physician of his
time, noted particularly that certain Carmelite monks suffered
especially from pestilence, and that they were especially filthy.
During the Black Death no less than nine hundred Carthusian monks
fell victims in one group of buildings.
Naturally, such an example set by the venerated leaders of
thought exercised great influence throughout society, and all the
more because it justified the carelessness and sloth to which
ordinary humanity is prone. In the principal towns of Europe, as
well as in the country at large, down to a recent period, the
most ordinary sanitary precautions were neglected, and
pestilences continued to be attributed to the wrath of God or the
malice of Satan. As to the wrath of God, a new and powerful
impulse was given to this belief in the Church toward the end of
the sixth century by St. Gregory the Great. In 590, when he was
elected Pope, the city of Rome was suffering from a dreadful
pestilence: the people were dying by thousands; out of one
procession imploring the mercy of Heaven no less than eighty
persons died within an hour: what the heathen in an earlier epoch
had attributed to Apollo was now attributed to Jehovah, and
chroniclers tell us that fiery darts were seen flung from heaven
into the devoted city. But finally, in the midst of all this
horror, Gregory, at the head of a penitential procession, saw
hovering over the mausoleum of Hadrian the figure of the
archangel Michael, who was just sheathing a flaming sword, while
three angels were heard chanting the Regina Coeli. The legend
continues that the Pope immediately broke forth into hallelujahs
for this sign that the plague was stayed, and, as it shortly
afterward became less severe, a chapel was built at the summit of
the mausoleum and dedicated to St. Michael; still later, above
the whole was erected the colossal statue of the archangel
sheathing his sword, which still stands to perpetuate the legend.
Thus the greatest of Rome's ancient funeral monuments was made to
bear testimony to this medieval belief; the mausoleum of Hadrian
became the castle of St. Angelo. A legend like this, claiming to
date from the greatest of the early popes, and vouched for by
such an imposing monument, had undoubtedly a marked effect upon
the dominant theology throughout Europe, which was constantly
developing a great body of thought regarding the agencies by
which the Divine wrath might be averted.
First among these agencies, naturally, were evidences of
devotion, especially gifts of land, money, or privileges to
churches, monasteries, and shrines—the seats of fetiches which
it was supposed had wrought cures or might work them. The whole
evolution of modern history, not only ecclesiastical but civil,
has been largely affected by the wealth transferred to the clergy
at such periods. It was noted that in the fourteenth century,
after the great plague, the Black Death, had passed, an immensely
increased proportion of the landed and personal property of every
European country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a great
ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests of the
ministers of God."
Other modes of propitiating the higher powers were
penitential processions, the parading of images of the Virgin or
of saints through plague-stricken towns, and fetiches
innumerable. Very noted in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries were the processions of the flagellants, trooping
through various parts of Europe, scourging their naked bodies,
shrieking the penitential psalms, and often running from wild
excesses of devotion to the maddest orgies.
Sometimes, too, plagues were attributed to the wrath of
lesser heavenly powers. Just as, in former times, the fury of
"far-darting Apollo" was felt when his name was not respectfully
treated by mortals, so, in 1680, the Church authorities at Rome
discovered that the plague then raging resulted from the anger of
St. Sebastian because no monument had been erected to him. Such a
monument was therefore placed in the Church of St. Peter ad
Vincula, and the plague ceased.
So much for the endeavour to avert the wrath of the heavenly
powers. On the other hand, theological reasoning no less subtle
was used in thwarting the malice of Satan. This idea, too, came
from far. In the sacred books of India and Persia, as well as in
our own, we find the same theory of disease, leading to similar
means of cure. Perhaps the most astounding among Christian
survivals of this theory and its resultant practices was seen
during the plague at Rome in 1522. In that year, at that centre
of divine illumination, certain people, having reasoned upon the
matter, came to the conclusion that this great scourge was the
result of Satanic malice; and, in view of St. Paul's declaration
that the ancient gods were devils, and of the theory that the
ancient gods of Rome were the devils who had the most reason to
punish that city for their dethronement, and that the great
amphitheatre was the chosen haunt of these demon gods, an ox
decorated with garlands, after the ancient heathen manner, was
taken in procession to the Colosseum and solemnly sacrificed.
Even this proved vain, and the Church authorities then ordered
expiatory processions and ceremonies to propitiate the Almighty,
the Virgin, and the saints, who had been offended by this
temporary effort to bribe their enemies.
But this sort of theological reasoning developed an idea far
more disastrous, and this was that Satan, in causing pestilences,
used as his emissaries especially Jews and witches. The proof of
this belief in the case of the Jews was seen in the fact that
they escaped with a less percentage of disease than did the
Christians in the great plague periods. This was doubtless due in
some measure to their remarkable sanitary system, which had
probably originated thousands of years before in Egypt, and had
been handed down through Jewish lawgivers and statesmen.
Certainly they observed more careful sanitary rules and more
constant abstinence from dangerous foods than was usual among
Christians; but the public at large could not understand so
simple a cause, and jumped to the conclusion that their immunity
resulted from protection by Satan, and that this protection was
repaid and the pestilence caused by their wholesale poisoning of
Christians. As a result of this mode of thought, attempts were
made in all parts of Europe to propitiate the Almighty, to
thwart Satan, and to stop the plague by torturing and murdering
the Jews. Throughout Europe during great pestilences we hear of
extensive burnings of this devoted people. In Bavaria, at the
time of the Black Death, it is computed that twelve thousand
Jews thus perished; in the small town of Erfurt the number is
said to have been three thousand; in Strasburg, the Rue Brulee
remains as a monument to the two thousand Jews burned there for
poisoning the wells and causing the plague of 1348; at the royal
castle of Chinon, near Tours, an immense trench was dug, filled
with blazing wood, and in a single day one hundred and sixty Jews
were burned. Everywhere in continental Europe this mad
persecution went on; but it is a pleasure to say that one great
churchman, Pope Clement VI, stood against this popular unreason,
and, so far as he could bring his influence to bear on the
maddened populace, exercised it in favour of mercy to these
supposed enemies of the Almighty.
Yet, as late as 1527, the people of Pavia, being threatened
with plague, appealed to St. Bernardino of Feltro, who during his
life had been a fierce enemy of the Jews, and they passed a
decree promising that if the saint would avert the pestilence they
would expel the Jews from the city. The saint apparently accepted
the bargain, and in due time the Jews were expelled.
As to witches, the reasons for believing them the cause of
pestilence also came from far. This belief, too, had been poured
mainly from Oriental sources into our sacred books and thence
into the early Church, and was strengthened by a whole line of
Church authorities, fathers, doctors, and saints; but, above all,
by the great bull, Summis Desiderantes, issued by Pope Innocent
VIII, in 1484. This utterance from the seat of St. Peter
infallibly committed the Church to the idea that witches are a
great cause of disease, storms, and various ills which afflict
humanity; and the Scripture on which the action recommended
against witches in this papal bull, as well as in so many sermons
and treatises for centuries afterward, was based, was the famous
text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This idea
persisted long, and the evolution of it is among the most fearful
things in human history.
In Germany its development was especially terrible. From the
middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth,
Catholic and Protestant theologians and ecclesiastics vied with
each other in detecting witches guilty of producing sickness or
bad weather; women were sent to torture and death by thousands,
and with them, from time to time, men and children. On the
Catholic side sufficient warrant for this work was found in the
bull of Pope Innocent VIII, and the bishops' palaces of south
Germany became shambles,—the lordly prelates of Salzburg,
Wurzburg, and Bamberg taking the lead in this butchery.
In north Germany Protestantism was just as conscientiously
cruel. It based its theory and practice toward witches directly
upon the Bible, and above all on the great text which has cost
the lives of so many myriads of innocent men, women, and
children, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Naturally the
Protestant authorities strove to show that Protestantism was no
less orthodox in this respect than Catholicism; and such
theological jurists as Carpzov, Damhouder, and Calov did their
work thoroughly. An eminent authority on this subject estimates
the number of victims thus sacrificed during that century in
Germany alone at over a hundred thousand.
Among the methods of this witch activity especially credited
in central and southern Europe was the anointing of city walls
and pavements with a diabolical unguent causing pestilence. In
1530 Michael Caddo was executed with fearful tortures for thus
besmearing the pavements of Geneva. But far more dreadful was the
torturing to death of a large body of people at Milan, in the
following century, for producing the plague by anointing the
walls; and a little later similar punishments for the same crime
were administered in Toulouse and other cities. The case in Milan
may be briefly summarized as showing the ideas on sanitary
science of all classes, from highest to lowest, in the
seventeenth century. That city was then under the control of
Spain; and, its authorities having received notice from the
Spanish Government that certain persons suspected of witchcraft
had recently left Madrid, and had perhaps gone to Milan to anoint
the walls, this communication was dwelt upon in the pulpits as
another evidence of that Satanic malice which the Church alone
had the means of resisting, and the people were thus excited and
put upon the alert. One morning, in the year 1630, an old woman,
looking out of her window, saw a man walking along the street and
wiping his fingers upon the walls; she immediately called the
attention of another old woman, and they agreed that this man
must be one of the diabolical anointers. It was perfectly evident
to a person under ordinary conditions that this unfortunate man
was simply trying to remove from his fingers the ink gathered
while writing from the ink-horn which he carried in his girdle;
but this explanation was too simple to satisfy those who first
observed him or those who afterward tried him: a mob was raised
and he was thrown into prison. Being tortured, he at first did
not know what to confess; but, on inquiring from the jailer and
others, he learned what the charge was, and, on being again
subjected to torture utterly beyond endurance, he confessed
everything which was suggested to him; and, on being tortured
again and again to give the names of his accomplices, he accused,
at hazard, the first people in the city whom he thought of.
These, being arrested and tortured beyond endurance, confessed
and implicated a still greater number, until members of the
foremost families were included in the charge. Again and again
all these unfortunates were tortured beyond endurance. Under
paganism, the rule regarding torture had been that it should not
be carried beyond human endurance; and we therefore find Cicero
ridiculing it as a means of detecting crime, because a stalwart
criminal of strong nerves might resist it and go free, while a
physically delicate man, though innocent, would be forced to
confess. Hence it was that under paganism a limit was imposed to
the torture which could be administered; but, when Christianity
had become predominant throughout Europe, torture was developed
with a cruelty never before known. There had been evolved a
doctrine of "excepted cases"—these "excepted cases" being
especially heresy and witchcraft; for by a very simple and
logical process of theological reasoning it was held that Satan
would give supernatural strength to his special devotees—that
is, to heretics and witches—and therefore that, in dealing with
them, there should be no limit to the torture. The result was in
this particular case, as in tens of thousands besides, that the
accused confessed everything which could be suggested to them,
and often in the delirium of their agony confessed far more than
all that the zeal of the prosecutors could suggest. Finally, a
great number of worthy people were sentenced to the most cruel
death which could be invented. The records of their trials and
deaths are frightful. The treatise which in recent years has
first brought to light in connected form an authentic account of
the proceedings in this affair, and which gives at the end
engravings of the accused subjected to horrible tortures on their
way to the stake and at the place of execution itself, is one of
the most fearful monuments of theological reasoning and human folly.
To cap the climax, after a poor apothecary had been tortured
into a confession that he had made the magic ointment, and when
he had been put to death with the most exquisite refinements of
torture, his family were obliged to take another name, and were
driven out from the city; his house was torn down, and on its
site was erected "The Column of Infamy," which remained on this
spot until, toward the end of the eighteenth century, a party of
young radicals, probably influenced by the reading of Beccaria,
sallied forth one night and leveled this pious monument to the ground.
Herein was seen the culmination and decline of the bull
Summis Desiderantes. It had been issued by him whom a majority
of the Christian world believes to be infallible in his teachings
to the Church as regards faith and morals; yet here was a
deliberate utterance in a matter of faith and morals which even
children now know to be utterly untrue. Though Beccaria's book on
Crimes and Punishments, with its declarations against torture,
was placed by the Church authorities upon the Index, and though
the faithful throughout the Christian world were forbidden to
read it, even this could not prevent the victory of truth over
this infallible utterance of Innocent VIII.
As the seventeenth century went on, ingenuity in all parts
of Europe seemed devoted to new developments of fetichism. A very
curious monument of this evolution in Italy exists in the Royal
Gallery of Paintings at Naples, where may be seen several
pictures representing the measures taken to save the city from
the plague during the seventeenth century, but especially from
the plague of 1656. One enormous canvas gives a curious example
of the theological doctrine of intercession between man and his
Maker, spun out to its logical length. In the background is the
plague-stricken city: in the foreground the people are praying
to the city authorities to avert the plague; the city authorities
are praying to the Carthusian monks; the monks are praying to St.
Martin, St. Bruno, and St. Januarius; these three saints in their
turn are praying to the Virgin; the Virgin prays to Christ; and
Christ prays to the Almighty. Still another picture represents
the people, led by the priests, executing with horrible tortures
the Jews, heretics, and witches who were supposed to cause the
pestilence of 1656, while in the heavens the Virgin and St.
Januarius are interceding with Christ to sheathe his sword and
stop the plague.
In such an atmosphere of thought it is no wonder that the
death statistics were appalling. We hear of districts in which
not more than one in ten escaped, and some were entirely
depopulated. Such appeals to fetich against pestilence have
continued in Naples down to our own time, the great saving power
being the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. In 1856 the
present writer saw this miracle performed in the gorgeous chapel
of the saint forming part of the Cathedral of Naples. The chapel
was filled with devout worshippers of every class, from the
officials in court dress, representing the Bourbon king, down to
the lowest lazzaroni. The reliquary of silver-gilt, shaped like a
large human head, and supposed to contain the skull of the saint,
was first placed upon the altar; next, two vials containing a
dark substance said to be his blood, having been taken from the
wall, were also placed upon the altar near the head. As the
priests said masses, they turned the vials from time to time,
and the liquefaction being somewhat delayed, the great crowd of
people burst out into more and more impassioned expostulation and
petitions to the saint. Just in front of the altar were the
lazzaroni who claimed to be descendants of the saint's family,
and these were especially importunate: at such times they beg,
they scold, they even threaten; they have been known to abuse the
saint roundly, and to tell him that, if he did not care to show
his favour to the city by liquefying his blood, St. Cosmo and St.
Damian were just as good saints as he, and would no doubt be very
glad to have the city devote itself to them. At last, on the
occasion above referred to, the priest, turning the vials
suddenly, announced that the saint had performed the miracle,
and instantly priests, people, choir, and organ burst forth into
a great Te Deum; bells rang, and cannon roared; a procession was
formed, and the shrine containing the saint's relics was carried
through the streets, the people prostrating themselves on both
sides of the way and throwing showers of rose leaves upon the
shrine and upon the path before it. The contents of these
precious vials are an interesting relic indeed, for they
represent to us vividly that period when men who were willing to
go to the stake for their religious opinions thought it not wrong
to save the souls of their fellowmen by pious mendacity and
consecrated fraud. To the scientific eye this miracle is very
simple: the vials contain, no doubt, one of those mixtures fusing
at low-temperature, which, while kept in its place within the
cold stone walls of the church, remains solid, but upon being
brought out into the hot, crowded chapel, and fondled by the warm
hands of the priests, gradually softens and becomes liquid. It
was curious to note, at the time above mentioned, that even the
high functionaries representing the king looked at the miracle
with awe: they evidently found "joy in believing," and one of
them assured the present writer that the only thing which could
cause it was the direct exercise of miraculous power.
It may be reassuring to persons contemplating a visit to
that beautiful capital in these days, that, while this miracle
still goes on, it is no longer the only thing relied upon to
preserve the public health. An unbelieving generation, especially
taught by the recent horrors of the cholera, has thought it wise
to supplement the power of St. Januarius by the "Risanamento,"
begun mainly in 1885 and still going on. The drainage of the city
has thus been greatly improved, the old wells closed, and pure
water introduced from the mountains. Moreover, at the last
outburst of cholera a few years since, a noble deed was done
which by its moral effect exercised a widespread healing power.
Upon hearing of this terrific outbreak of pestilence, King
Humbert, though under the ban of the Church, broke from all the
entreaties of his friends and family, went directly into the
plague-stricken city, and there, in the streets, public places,
and hospitals, encouraged the living, comforted the sick and
dying, and took means to prevent a further spread of the
pestilence. To the credit of the Church it should also be said
that the Cardinal Archbishop San Felice joined him in this.
Miracle for miracle, the effect of this visit of the king
seems to have surpassed anything that St. Januarius could do, for
it gave confidence and courage which very soon showed their
effects in diminishing the number of deaths. It would certainly
appear that in this matter the king was more directly under
Divine inspiration and guidance than was the Pope; for the fact
that King Humbert went to Naples at the risk of his life, while
Leo XIII remained in safety at the Vatican, impressed the Italian
people in favour of the new regime and against the old as
nothing else could have done.
In other parts of Italy the same progress is seen under the
new Italian government. Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, and especially
Rome, which under the sway of the popes was scandalously filthy,
are now among the cleanest cities in Europe. What the relics of
St. Januarius, St. Anthony, and a multitude of local fetiches
throughout Italy were for ages utterly unable to do, has been
accomplished by the development of the simplest sanitary principles.
Spain shows much the same characteristics of a country where
theological considerations have been all-controlling for
centuries. Down to the interference of Napoleon with that
kingdom, all sanitary efforts were looked upon as absurd if not
impious. The most sober accounts of travellers in the Spanish
Peninsula until a recent period are sometimes irresistibly comic
in their pictures of peoples insisting on maintaining
arrangements more filthy than any which would be permitted in
an American backwoods camp, while taking enormous pains to stop
pestilence by bell-ringings, processions, and new dresses bestowed
upon the local Madonnas; yet here, too, a healthful scepticism has
begun to work for good. The outbreaks of cholera in recent years
have done some little to bring in better sanitary measures.
GRADUAL DECAY OF THEOLOGICAL VIEWS REGARDING SANITATION.
We have seen how powerful in various nations especially
obedient to theology were the forces working in opposition to the
evolution of hygiene, and we shall find this same opposition,
less effective, it is true, but still acting with great power, in
countries which had become somewhat emancipated from theological
control. In England, during the medieval period, persecutions of
Jews were occasionally resorted to, and here and there we hear of
persecutions of witches; but, as torture was rarely used in
England, there were, from those charged with producing plague,
few of those torture-born confessions which in other countries
gave rise to widespread cruelties. Down to the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries the filthiness in the ordinary mode of life
in England was such as we can now hardly conceive: fermenting
organic material was allowed to accumulate and become a part of
the earthen floors of rural dwellings; and this undoubtedly
developed the germs of many diseases. In his noted letter to the
physician of Cardinal Wolsey, Erasmus describes the filth thus
incorporated into the floors of English houses, and, what is of
far more importance, he shows an inkling of the true cause of the
wasting diseases of the period. He says, "If I entered into a
chamber which had been uninhabited for months, I was immediately
seized with a fever." He ascribed the fearful plague of the
sweating sickness to this cause. So, too, the noted Dr. Caius
advised sanitary precautions against the plague, and in
after-generations, Mead, Pringle, and others urged them; but the
prevailing thought was too strong, and little was done. Even the
floor of the presence chamber of Queen Elizabeth in Greenwich
Palace was "covered with hay, after the English fashion," as one
of the chroniclers tells us.
In the seventeenth century, aid in these great scourges was
mainly sought in special church services. The foremost English
churchmen during that century being greatly given to study of the
early fathers of the Church; the theological theory of disease,
so dear to the fathers, still held sway, and this was the case
when the various visitations reached their climax in the great
plague of London in 1665, which swept off more than a hundred
thousand people from that city. The attempts at meeting it by
sanitary measures were few and poor; the medical system of the
time was still largely tinctured by superstitions resulting from
medieval modes of thought; hence that plague was generally
attributed to the Divine wrath caused by "the prophaning of the
Sabbath." Texts from Numbers, the Psalms, Zechariah, and the
Apocalypse were dwelt upon in the pulpits to show that plagues
are sent by the Almighty to punish sin; and perhaps the most
ghastly figure among all those fearful scenes described by De Foe
is that of the naked fanatic walking up and down the streets with
a pan of fiery coals upon his head, and, after the manner of
Jonah at Nineveh, proclaiming woe to the city, and its
destruction in forty days.
That sin caused this plague is certain, but it was sanitary
sin. Both before and after this culmination of the disease cases
of plague were constantly occurring in London throughout the
seventeenth century; but about the beginning of the eighteenth
century it began to disappear. The great fire had done a good
work by sweeping off many causes and centres of infection, and
there had come wider streets, better pavements, and improved
water supply; so that, with the disappearance of the plague,
other diseases, especially dysenteries, which had formerly raged
in the city, became much less frequent.
But, while these epidemics were thus checked in London,
others developed by sanitary ignorance raged fearfully both there
and elsewhere, and of these perhaps the most fearful was the jail
fever. The prisons of that period were vile beyond belief. Men
were confined in dungeons rarely if ever disinfected after the
death of previous occupants, and on corridors connecting directly
with the foulest sewers: there was no proper disinfection,
ventilation, or drainage; hence in most of the large prisons for
criminals or debtors the jail fever was supreme, and from these
centres it frequently spread through the adjacent towns. This was
especially the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. In the Black Assize at Oxford, in 1577, the chief
baron, the sheriff, and about three hundred men died within forty
hours. Lord Bacon declared the jail fever "the most pernicious
infection next to the plague." In 1730, at the Dorsetshire
Assize, the chief baron and many lawyers were killed by it. The
High Sheriff of Somerset also took the disease and died. A single
Scotch regiment, being infected from some prisoners, lost no less
than two hundred. In 1750 the disease was so virulent at Newgate,
in the heart of London, that two judges, the lord mayor, sundry
aldermen, and many others, died of it.
It is worth noting that, while efforts at sanitary dealing
with this state of things were few, the theological spirit
developed a new and special form of prayer for the sufferers and
placed it in the Irish Prayer Book.
These forms of prayer seem to have been the main reliance
through the first half of the eighteenth century. But about 1750
began the work of John Howard, who visited the prisons of
England, made known their condition to the world, and never
rested until they were greatly improved. Then he applied the same
benevolent activity to prisons in other countries, in the far
East, and in southern Europe, and finally laid down his life, a
victim to disease contracted on one of his missions of mercy; but
the hygienic reforms he began were developed more and more until
this fearful blot upon modern civilization was removed.
The same thing was seen in the Protestant colonies of
America; but here, while plagues were steadily attributed to
Divine wrath or Satanic malice, there was one case in which it
was claimed that such a visitation was due to the Divine mercy.
The pestilence among the Indians, before the arrival of the
Plymouth Colony, was attributed in a notable work of that period
to the Divine purpose of clearing New England for the heralds of
the gospel; on the other hand, the plagues which destroyed the
white population were attributed by the same authority to devils
and witches. In Cotton Mather's Wonder of the Invisible World,
published at Boston in 1693, we have striking examples of this.
The great Puritan divine tells us:
"Plagues are some of those woes, with which the Divil
troubles us. It is said of the Israelites, in 1 Cor. 10. 10.
They were destroyed of the destroyer. That is, they had the
Plague among them. 'Tis the Destroyer, or the Divil, that
scatters Plagues about the World: Pestilential and Contagious
Diseases, 'tis the Divel, who do's oftentimes Invade us with
them. 'Tis no uneasy thing, for the Divel, to impregnate the Air
about us, with such Malignant Salts, as meeting with the Salt of
our Microcosm, shall immediately cast us into that Fermentation
and Putrefaction, which will utterly dissolve All the Vital Tyes
within us; Ev'n as an Aqua Fortis, made with a conjuuction of
Nitre and Vitriol, Corrodes what it Siezes upon. And when the
Divel has raised those Arsenical Fumes, which become Venomous.
Quivers full of Terrible Arrows, how easily can he shoot the
deleterious Miasms into those Juices or Bowels of Men's Bodies,
which will soon Enflame them with a Mortal Fire! Hence come such
Plagues, as that Beesome of Destruction which within our memory
swept away such a throng of people from one English City in one
Visitation: and hence those Infectious Feavers, which are but so
many Disguised Plagues among us, Causing Epidemical Desolations."
Mather gives several instances of witches causing diseases,
and speaks of "some long Bow'd down under such a Spirit of
Infirmity" being "Marvelously Recovered upon the Death of the
Witches," of which he gives an instance. He also cites a case
where a patient "was brought unto death's door and so remained
until the witch was taken and carried away by the constable, when
he began at once to recover and was soon well."
In France we see, during generation after generation, a
similar history evolved; pestilence after pestilence came, and
was met by various fetiches. Noteworthy is the plague at
Marseilles near the beginning of the last century. The chronicles
of its sway are ghastly. They speak of great heaps of the
unburied dead in the public places, "forming pestilential
volcanoes"; of plague-stricken men and women in delirium
wandering naked through the streets; of churches and shrines
thronged with great crowds shrieking for mercy; of other crowds
flinging themselves into the wildest debauchery; of robber bands
assassinating the dying and plundering the dead; of three
thousand neglected children collected in one hospital and then
left to die; and of the death-roll numbering at last fifty
thousand out of a population of less than ninety thousand.
In the midst of these fearful scenes stood a body of men and
women worthy to be held in eternal honour—the physicians from
Paris and Montpellier; the mayor of the city, and one or two of
his associates; but, above all, the Chevalier Roze and Bishop
Belzunce. The history of these men may well make us glory in
human nature; but in all this noble group the figure of Belzunce
is the most striking. Nobly and firmly, when so many others even
among the regular and secular ecclesiastics fled, he stood by his
flock: day and night he was at work in the hospitals, cheering
the living, comforting the dying, and doing what was possible for
the decent disposal of the dead. In him were united the, two
great antagonistic currents of religion and of theology. As a
theologian he organized processions and expiatory services,
which, it must be confessed, rather increased the disease than
diminished it; moreover, he accepted that wild dream of a
hysterical nun—the worship of the material, physical sacred
heart of Jesus—and was one of the first to consecrate his diocese
to it; but, on the other hand, the religious spirit gave in him
one of its most beautiful manifestations in that or any other
century; justly have the people of Marseilles placed his statue
in the midst of their city in an attitude of prayer and blessing.
In every part of Europe and America, down to a recent
period, we find pestilences resulting from carelessness or
superstition still called "inscrutable providences." As late as
the end of the eighteenth century, when great epidemics made
fearful havoc in Austria, the main means against them seem to
have been grovelling before the image of St. Sebastian and
calling in special "witch-doctors"—that is, monks who cast out
devils. To seek the aid of physicians was, in the neighbourhood
of these monastic centres, very generally considered impious, and
the enormous death rate in such neighbourhoods was only
diminished in the present century, when scientific hygiene began
to make its way.
The old view of pestilence had also its full course in
Calvinistic Scotland; the only difference being that, while in
Roman Catholic countries relief was sought by fetiches, gifts,
processions, exorcisms, burnings of witches, and other works of
expiation, promoted by priests; in Scotland, after the
Reformation, it was sought in fast-days and executions of witches
promoted by Protestant elders. Accounts of the filthiness of
Scotch cities and villages, down to a period well within this
century, seem monstrous. All that in these days is swept into the
sewers was in those allowed to remain around the houses or
thrown into the streets. The old theological theory, that "vain
is the help of man," checked scientific thought and paralyzed
sanitary endeavour. The result was natural: between the
thirteenth and seventeenth centuries thirty notable epidemics
swept the country, and some of them carried off multitudes; but
as a rule these never suggested sanitary improvement; they were
called "visitations," attributed to Divine wrath against human
sin, and the work of the authorities was to announce the
particular sin concerned and to declaim against it. Amazing
theories were thus propounded—theories which led to spasms of
severity; and, in some of these, offences generally punished much
less severely were visited with death. Every pulpit interpreted
the ways of God to man in such seasons so as rather to increase
than to diminish the pestilence. The effect of thus seeking
supernatural causes rather than natural may be seen in such
facts as the death by plague of one fourth of the whole
population of the city of Perth in a single year of the fifteenth
century, other towns suffering similarly both then and afterward.
Here and there, physicians more wisely inspired endeavoured
to push sanitary measures, and in 1585 attempts were made to
clean the streets of Edinburgh; but the chroniclers tell us that
"the magistrates and ministers gave no heed." One sort of
calamity, indeed, came in as a mercy—the great fires which swept
through the cities, clearing and cleaning them. Though the town
council of Edinburgh declared the noted fire of 1700 "a fearful
rebuke of God," it was observed that, after it had done its work,
disease and death were greatly diminished.
THE TRIUMPH OF SANITARY
SCIENCE.
But by those standing in the higher places of thought some
glimpses of scientific truth had already been obtained, and
attempts at compromise between theology and science in this field
began to be made, not only by ecclesiastics, but first of all, as
far back as the seventeenth century, by a man of science eminent
both for attainments and character—Robert Boyle. Inspired by the
discoveries in other fields, which had swept away so much of
theological thought, he could no longer resist the conviction
that some epidemics are due—in his own words—"to a tragical
concourse of natural causes"; but he argued that some of these
may be the result of Divine interpositions provoked by human
sins. As time went on, great difficulties showed themselves in
the way of this compromise—difficulties theological not less
than difficulties scientific. To a Catholic it was more and more
hard to explain the theological grounds why so many orthodox
cities, firm in the faith, were punished, and so many heretical
cities spared; and why, in regions devoted to the Church, the
poorer people, whose faith in theological fetiches was
unquestioning, died in times of pestilence like flies, while
sceptics so frequently escaped. Difficulties of the same sort
beset devoted Protestants; they, too, might well ask why it was
that the devout peasantry in their humble cottages perished,
while so much larger a proportion of the more sceptical upper
classes were untouched. Gradually it dawned both upon Catholic
and Protestant countries that, if any sin be punished by
pestilence, it is the sin of filthiness; more and more it began
to be seen by thinking men of both religions that Wesley's great
dictum stated even less than the truth; that not only was
"cleanliness akin to godliness," but that, as a means of keeping
off pestilence, it was far superior to godliness as godliness was
then generally understood.
The recent history of sanitation in all civilized countries
shows triumphs which might well fill us with wonder, did there
not rise within us a far greater wonder that they were so long
delayed. Amazing is it to see how near the world has come again
and again to discovering the key to the cause and cure of
pestilence. It is now a matter of the simplest elementary
knowledge that some of the worst epidemics are conveyed in water.
But this fact seems to have been discovered many times in human
history. In the Peloponnesian war the Athenians asserted that
their enemies had poisoned their cisterns; in the Middle Ages the
people generally declared that the Jews had poisoned their wells;
and as late as the cholera of 1832 the Parisian mob insisted that
the water-carriers who distributed water for drinking purposes
from the Seine, polluted as it was by sewage, had poisoned it,
and in some cases murdered them on this charge: so far did this
feeling go that locked covers were sometimes placed upon the
water-buckets. Had not such men as Roger Bacon and his long line
of successors been thwarted by theological authority,—had not
such men as Thomas Aquinas, Vincent of Beauvais, and Albert the
Great been drawn or driven from the paths of science into the
dark, tortuous paths of theology, leading no whither,—the world
to-day, at the end of the nineteenth century, would have arrived
at the solution of great problems and the enjoyment of great
results which will only be reached at the end of the twentieth
century, and even in generations more remote. Diseases like
typhoid fever, influenza and pulmonary consumption, scarlet
fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, and la grippe, which now carry off
so many most precious lives, would have long since ceased to
scourge the world.
Still, there is one cause for satisfaction: the law
governing the relation of theology to disease is now well before
the world, and it is seen in the fact that, just in proportion as
the world progressed from the sway of Hippocrates to that of the
ages of faith, so it progressed in the frequency and severity of
great pestilences; and that, on the other hand, just in
proportion as the world has receded from that period when
theology was all-pervading and all-controlling, plague after
plague has disappeared, and those remaining have become less and
less frequent and virulent.
The recent history of hygiene in all countries shows a long
series of victories, and these may well be studied in Great
Britain and the United States. In the former, though there had
been many warnings from eminent physicians, and above all in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from men like Caius, Mead,
and Pringle, the result was far short of what might have been
gained; and it was only in the year 1838 that a systematic
sanitary effort was begun in England by the public authorities.
The state of things at that time, though by comparison with the
Middle Ages happy, was, by comparison with what has since been
gained, fearful: the death rate among all classes was high, but
among the poor it was ghastly. Out of seventy-seven thousand
paupers in London during the years 1837 and 1838, fourteen
thousand were suffering from fever, and of these nearly six
thousand from typhus. In many other parts of the British Islands
the sanitary condition was no better. A noble body of men
grappled with the problem, and in a few years one of these rose
above his fellows—the late Edwin Chadwick. The opposition to his
work was bitter, and, though many churchmen aided him, the
support given by theologians and ecclesiastics as a whole was
very far short of what it should have been. Too many of them were
occupied in that most costly and most worthless of all
processes, "the saving of souls" by the inculcation of dogma. Yet
some of the higher ecclesiastics and many of the lesser clergy
did much, sometimes risking their lives, and one of them, Sidney
Godolphin Osborne, deserves lasting memory for his struggle to
make known the sanitary wants of the peasantry.
Chadwick began to be widely known in 1848 as a member of the
Board of Health, and was driven out for a time for overzeal; but
from one point or another, during forty years, he fought the
opposition, developed the new work, and one of the best exhibits
of its results is shown in his address before the Sanitary
Conference at Brighton in 1888. From this and other perfectly
trustworthy sources some idea may be gained of the triumph of the
scientific over the theological method of dealing with disease,
whether epidemic or sporadic.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century the annual
mortality of London is estimated at not less than eighty in a
thousand; about the middle of this century it stood at
twenty-four in a thousand; in 1889 it stood at less than eighteen
in a thousand; and in many parts the most recent statistics show
that it has been brought down to fourteen or fifteen in a
thousand. A quarter of a century ago the death rate from disease
in the Royal Guards at London was twenty in a thousand; in 1888
it had been reduced to six in a thousand. In the army generally
it had been seventeen in a thousand, but it has been reduced
until it now stands at eight. In the old Indian army it had been
sixty-nine in a thousand, but of late it has been brought down
first to twenty, and finally to fourteen. Mr. Chadwick in his
speech proved that much more might be done, for he called
attention to the German army, where the death rate from disease
has been reduced to between five and six in a thousand. The
Public Health Act having been passed in 1875, the death rate in
England among men fell, between 1871 and 1880, more than four in
a thousand, and among women more than six in a thousand. In the
decade between 1851 and 1860 there died of diseases attributable
to defective drainage and impure water over four thousand persons
in every million throughout England: these numbers have declined
until in 1888 there died less than two thousand in every million.
The most striking diminution of the deaths from such causes was
found in 1891, in the case of typhoid fever, that diminution
being fifty per cent. As to the scourge which, next to plagues
like the Black Death, was formerly the most dreaded—smallpox—there
died of it in London during the year 1890 just one person. Drainage
in Bristol reduced the death rate by consumption from 4.4 to 2.3; at
Cardiff, from 3.47 to 2.31; and in all England and Wales, from 2.68
in 1851 to 1.55 in 1888.
What can be accomplished by better sanitation is also seen
to-day by a comparison between the death rate among the children
outside and inside the charity schools. The death rate among
those outside in 1881 was twelve in a thousand; while inside,
where the children were under sanitary regulations maintained by
competent authorities, it has been brought down first to eight,
then to four, and finally to less than three in a thousand.
In view of statistics like these, it becomes clear that
Edwin Chadwick and his compeers among the sanitary authorities
have in half a century done far more to reduce the rate of
disease and death than has been done in fifteen hundred years by
all the fetiches which theological reasoning could devise or
ecclesiastical power enforce.
Not less striking has been the history of hygiene in France:
thanks to the decline of theological control over the
universities, to the abolition of monasteries, and to such
labours in hygienic research and improvement as those of Tardieu,
Levy, and Bouchardat, a wondrous change has been wrought in
public health. Statistics carefully kept show that the mean
length of human life has been remarkably increased. In the
eighteenth century it was but twenty-three years; from 1825 to
1830 it was thirty-two years and eight months; and since 1864,
thirty-seven years and six months.
THE RELATION OF SANITARY
SCIENCE TO RELIGION.
The question may now arise whether this progress in sanitary
science has been purchased at any real sacrifice of religion in
its highest sense. One piece of recent history indicates an
answer to this question. The Second Empire in France had its head
in Napoleon III, a noted Voltairean. At the climax of his power
he determined to erect an Academy of Music which should be the
noblest building of its kind. It was projected on a scale never
before known, at least in modern times, and carried on for years,
millions being lavished upon it. At the same time the emperor
determined to rebuild the Hotel-Dieu, the great Paris hospital;
this, too, was projected on a greater scale than anything of the
kind ever before known, and also required millions. But in the
erection of these two buildings the emperor's determination was
distinctly made known, that with the highest provision for
aesthetic enjoyment there should be a similar provision, moving
on parallel lines, for the relief of human suffering. This plan
was carried out to the letter: the Palace of the Opera and the
Hotel-Dieu went on with equal steps, and the former was not
allowed to be finished before the latter. Among all the "most
Christian kings" of the house of Bourbon who had preceded him for
five hundred years, history shows no such obedience to the
religious and moral sense of the nation. Catharine de' Medici and
her sons, plunging the nation into the great wars of religion,
never showed any such feeling; Louis XIV, revoking the Edict of
Nantes for the glory of God, and bringing the nation to sorrow
during many generations, never dreamed of making the construction
of his palaces and public buildings wait upon the demands of
charity. Louis XV, so subservient to the Church in all things,
never betrayed the slightest consciousness that, while making
enormous expenditures to gratify his own and the national
vanity, he ought to carry on works, pari passu, for charity. Nor
did the French nation, at those periods when it was most largely
under the control of theological considerations, seem to have any
inkling of the idea that nation or monarch should make provision
for relief from human suffering, to justify provision for the
sumptuous enjoyment of art: it was reserved for the second half
of the nineteenth century to develop this feeling so strongly,
though quietly, that Napoleon III, notoriously an unbeliever in all
orthodoxy, was obliged to recognise it and to set this great example.
Nor has the recent history of the United States been less
fruitful in lessons. Yellow fever, which formerly swept not only
Southern cities but even New York and Philadelphia, has now been
almost entirely warded off. Such epidemics as that in Memphis a
few years since, and the immunity of the city from such
visitations since its sanitary condition was changed by Mr.
Waring, are a most striking object lesson to the whole country.
Cholera, which again and again swept the country, has ceased to
be feared by the public at large. Typhus fever, once so deadly,
is now rarely heard of. Curious is it to find that some of the
diseases which in the olden time swept off myriads on myriads in
every country, now cause fewer deaths than some diseases thought
of little account, and for the cure of which people therefore
rely, to their cost, on quackery instead of medical science.
This development of sanitary science and hygiene in the
United States has also been coincident with a marked change in
the attitude of the American pulpit as regards the theory of
disease. In this country, as in others, down to a period within
living memory, deaths due to want of sanitary precautions were
constantly dwelt upon in funeral sermons as "results of national
sin," or as "inscrutable Providences." That view has mainly
passed away among the clergy of the more enlightened parts of the
country, and we now find them, as a rule, active in spreading
useful ideas as to the prevention of disease. The religious press
has been especially faithful in this respect, carrying to every
household more just ideas of sanitary precautions and hygienic living.
The attitude even of many among the most orthodox rulers in
church and state has been changed by facts like these. Lord
Palmerston refusing the request of the Scotch clergy that a fast
day be appointed to ward off cholera, and advising them to go
home and clean their streets,—the devout Emperor William II
forbidding prayer-meetings in a similar emergency, on the ground
that they led to neglect of practical human means of help,—all
this is in striking contrast to the older methods.
Well worthy of note is the ground taken in 1893, at
Philadelphia, by an eminent divine of the Protestant Episcopal
Church. The Bishop of Pennsylvania having issued a special call
to prayer in order to ward off the cholera, this clergyman
refused to respond to the call, declaring that to do so, in the
filthy condition of the streets then prevailing in Philadelphia,
would be blasphemous.
In summing up the whole subject, we see that in this field,
as in so many others, the triumph of scientific thought has
gradually done much to evolve in the world not only a theology
but also a religious spirit more and more worthy of the goodness
of God and of the destiny of man.