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.