l condition of the healing art;
and their knowledge of the disease was by no means despicable. They,
like the rest of mankind, have indulged in prejudices, and defended them,
perhaps, with too much obstinacy: some of these, however, were founded on
the mode of thinking of the age, and passed current in those days as
established truths; others continue to exist to the present hour.

Their successors in the nineteenth century ought not therefore to vaunt
too highly the pre-eminence of their knowledge, for they too will be
subjected to the severe judgment of posterity--they too will, with
reason, be accused of human weakness and want of foresight.

The medical faculty of Paris, the most celebrated of the fourteenth
century, were commissioned to deliver their opinion on the causes of the
Black Plague, and to furnish some appropriate regulations with regard to
living during its prevalence. This document is sufficiently remarkable
to find a place here.

"We, the Members of the College of Physicians of Paris, have, after
mature consideration and consultation on the present mortality, collected
the advice of our old masters in the art, and intend to make known the
causes of this pestilence more clearly than could be done according to
the rules and principles of astrology and natural science; we, therefore,
declare as follows:--

"It is known that in India and the vicinity of the Great Sea, the
constellations which combated the rays of the sun, and the warmth of the
heavenly fire, exerted their power especially against that sea, and
struggled violently with its waters. (Hence vapours often originate
which envelop the sun, and convert his light into darkness.) These
vapours alternately rose and fell for twenty-eight days; but, at last,
sun and fire acted so powerfully upon the sea that they attracted a great
portion of it to themselves, and the waters of the ocean arose in the
form of vapour; thereby the waters were in some parts so corrupted that
the fish which they contained died. These corrupted waters, however, the
heat of the sun could not consume, neither could other wholesome water,
hail or snow and dew, originate therefrom. On the contrary, this vapour
spread itself through the air in many places on the earth, and enveloped
them in fog.

"Such was the case all over Arabia, in a part of India, in Crete, in the
plains and valleys of Macedonia, in Hungary, Albania, and Sicily. Should
the same thing occur in Sardi