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.( 337) (337) For the plague at Marseilles and its depopulation, see Henri Martin, Histoire de France, vol.xv, especially document cited in appendix; also Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap.

xliii; also Rambaud.

For the resort to witch doctors in Austria against pestilence, down to the end of the eighteenth century, see Biedermann, Deutschland im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert.

For the resort to St.Sebastian, see the widespread editions of the Vita et Gesta Sancti Sebastiani, contra pestem patroni, prefaced with commendations from bishops and other high ecclesiastics.