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FROM FETICH TO HYGIENE.
I.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.