Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/619

Rh time was still largely tinctured by superstitions resulting from mediæval 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 centers 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 sin 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 centers 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 special forms of prayer for prisoners, and especially that a new prayer was placed in the Irish Prayer-book.