Let it not be supposed that they wanted knowledge respecting the propagation of contagious diseases.

On the contrary, they were as well informed on this subject as the modern; but this was shown where individual property, not where human life, on the grand scale was to be protected.

Hence the ancients made a general practice of arresting the progress of murrains among cattle by a separation of the diseased from the healthy.

Their herds alone enjoyed that protection which they held it impracticable to extend to human society, because they had no wish to do so.

That the governments in the fourteenth century were not yet so far advanced as to put into practice general regulations for checking the plague needs no especial proof.