lood-letting with sagacity, as an
experienced physician; yet he was unable, as may be imagined, to moderate
the desire for bleeding shown by the ignorant monks. He was averse to
draw blood from the veins of patients under fourteen years of age; but
counteracted inflammatory excitement in them by cupping, and endeavoured
to moderate the inflammation of the tumid glands by leeches. Most of
those who were bled, died; he therefore reserved this remedy for the
plethoric; especially for the papal courtiers and the hypocritical
priests, whom he saw gratifying their sensual desires, and imitating
Epicurus, whilst they pompously pretended to follow Christ. He
recommended burning the boils with a red-hot iron only in the plague
without fever, which occurred in single cases; and was always ready to
correct those over-hasty surgeons who, with fire and violent remedies,
did irremediable injury to their patients. Michael Savonarola, professor
in Ferrara (1462), reasoning on the susceptibility of the human frame to
the influence of pestilential infection, as the cause of such various
modifications of disease, expresses himself as a modern physician would
on this point; and an adoption of the principle of contagion was the
foundation of his definition of the plague. No less worthy of
observation are the views of the celebrated Valescus of Taranta, who,
during the final visitation of the Black Death, in 1382, practised as a
physician at Montpellier, and handed down to posterity what has been
repeated in innumerable treatises on plague, which were written during
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Of all these notions and views regarding the plague, whose development we
have represented, there are two especially, which are prominent in
historical importance:--1st, The opinion of learned physicians, that the
pestilence, or epidemic constitution, is the parent of various kinds of
disease; that the plague sometimes, indeed, but by no means always,
originates from it: that, to speak in the language of the moderns, the
pestilence bears the same relation to contagion that a predisposing cause
does to an occasional cause; and 2ndly, the universal conviction of the
contagious power of that disease.

Contagion gradually attracted more notice: it was thought that in it the
most powerful occasional cause might be avoided; the possibility of
protecting whole cities by separation became gradually more evident; and
so horrifying was the reco