olitical, are allowed their free range. As relates to infectious
diseases, for example, this kingdom is now in a less civilised state than
it was in my days, three centuries ago, when the leper was separated from
general society; and when, although the science of medicine was at once
barbarous and fantastical, the existence of pesthouses showed at least
some approaches towards a medical police.

_Montesinos_.--They order these things better in Utopia.

_Sir Thomas More_.--In this, as well as in some other points upon which
we shall touch hereafter, the difference between you and the Utopians is
as great as between the existing generation and the race by whom yonder
circle was set up. With regard to diseases and remedies in general, the
real state of the case may be consolatory, but it is not comfortable.
Great and certain progress has been made in chirurgery; and if the
improvements in the other branch of medical science have not been so
certain and so great, it is because the physician works in the dark, and
has to deal with what is hidden and mysterious. But the evils for which
these sciences are the palliatives have increased in a proportion that
heavily overweighs the benefit of improved therapeutics. For as the
intercourse between nations has become greater, the evils of one have
been communicated to another. Pigs, Spanish dollars, and Norway rats,
are not the only commodities and incommodities which have performed the
circumnavigation, and are to be found wherever European ships have
touched. Diseases also find their way from one part of the inhabited
globe to another, wherever it is possible for them to exist. The most
formidable endemic or contagious maladies in your nosology are not
indigenous; and as far as regards health therefore, the ancient Britons,
with no other remedies than their fields and woods afforded them, and no
other medical practitioners than their deceitful priests, were in a
better condition than their descendants, with all the instruction which
is derived from Sydenham and Heberden, and Hunter, and with all the
powers which chemistry has put into their hands.

_Montesinos_.--You have well said that there is nothing comfortable in
this view of the case: but what is there consolatory in it?

_Sir Thomas More_.--The consolation is upon your principle of expectant
hope. Whenever improved morals, wiser habits, more practical religion,
and more efficient institutions shall have diminished