. As the
epidemics progressed, attempts to dispose of the dead were abandoned.
Putrefying bodies were everywhere. Whole cities were left desolate, the
few survivors having fled.

It is not to be wondered at that such epidemics swept over Europe when
it was taught that these were the vengeance of God. How could it be
discovered that the real causes were the crowded conditions and bad
sanitation of the cities, the squalor, the misrule, and gross immorality
occasioned by the Holy Wars, when hordes of soldier-bandits plagued the
countryside? The devout continued to live in their squalor, to trust in
the Lord, and to die by the millions.

In all pestilences down to the present time, the Church authorities,
instead of aiding and devising sanitary measures, have preached the
necessity of immediate atonement for offenses against the Almighty. The
chief cause of the immense sacrifice of lives in these plagues was of
course the lack of hygienic precautions. But how could this be
discovered when, for ages, living in filth was regarded by great numbers
of holy men as an evidence of sanctity!

St. Hilarion lived his whole life long in utter physical uncleanliness.
St. Athanasius glorifies St. Anthony because he had never washed his
feet. St. Abraham's most striking evidence of holiness was that for
fifty years he washed neither his hands nor his feet; St. Sylvia never
washed any part of her body save her fingers; St. Euphraxia belonged to
a convent in which the nuns religiously abstained from bathing; St. Mary
of Egypt was eminent for filthiness; St. Simeon Stylites was in this
respect unspeakable--the least that can be said is that he lived in
ordure and stench intolerable to his visitors. For century after century
the idea prevailed that filthiness was akin to holiness.

Another stumblingblock hindering the beginnings of modern medicine and
surgery, was the theory regarding the unlawfulness of meddling with the
bodies of the dead. The dissection of the human body was prohibited
since the injury to the body would prevent its resurrection on the Last
Day. Andreas Vesalius was the pioneer in the movement for increased
knowledge of anatomy, and in 1543, when his work appeared, he was
condemned to death by the Inquisition as a magician. He escaped this
fate by undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem only to be shipwrecked on
the Island of Zante when he attempted to return, and there died in
misery and destitution.

In the year 1853