iol,
Corrodes what it Siezes upon. And when the Divel has raised those
Arsenical Fumes, which become Venomous. Quivers full of Terrible Arrows,
how easily can he shoot the deleterious Miasms into those Juices or
Bowels of Men's Bodies, which will soon Enflame them with a Mortal Fire!
Hence come such Plagues, as that Beesome of Destruction which within our
memory swept away such a throng of people from one English City in one
Visitation: and hence those Infectious Feavers, which are but so many
Disguised Plagues among us, Causing Epidemical Desolations."

Mather gives several instances of witches causing diseases, and speaks
of "some long Bow'd down under such a Spirit of Infirmity" being
"Marvelously Recovered upon the Death of the Witches," of which he gives
an instance. He also cites a case where a patient "was brought unto
death's door and so remained until the witch was taken and carried
away by the constable, when he began at once to recover and was soon
well."(336)

(336) For the passages from Cotton Mather, see his book as cited, pp.
17, 18, also 134, 145. Johnson declares that "by this meanes Christ...
not only made roome for His people to plant, but also tamed the hard
and cruell hearts of these barbarous Indians, insomuch that a halfe a
handful of His people landing not long after in Plymouth Plantation,
found little resistance." See The History of New England, by Edward
Johnson, London, 1654. Reprinted in the Massachusetts Historical
Society's Collection, second series, vol. i, p. 67.

In France we see, during generation after generation, a similar history
evolved; pestilence after pestilence came, and was met by various
fetiches. Noteworthy is the plague at Marseilles near the beginning of
the last century. The chronicles of its sway are ghastly. They speak
of great heaps of the unburied dead in the public places, "forming
pestilential volcanoes"; of plague-stricken men and women in delirium
wandering naked through the streets; of churches and shrines thronged
with great crowds shrieking for mercy; of other crowds flinging
themselves into the wildest debauchery; of robber bands assassinating
the dying and plundering the dead; of three thousand neglected children
collected in one hospital and then left to die; and of the death-roll
numbering at last fifty thousand out of a population of less than ninety
thousand.

In the midst of these fearful scenes stood a body of men and women
worthy to be he