respected Galen, he, in common with all his contemporaries,
believed in a putrid corruption of the blood in the lungs and in
the heart, which was occasioned by the pestilential atmosphere,
and was forthwith communicated to the whole body. He thought,
therefore, that everything depended upon a sufficient purification
of the air, by means of large blazing fires of odoriferous wood,
in the vicinity of the healthy as well as of the sick, and also
upon an appropriate manner of living, so that the putridity might
not overpower the diseased. In conformity with notions derived
from the ancients, he depended upon bleeding and purging, at the
commencement of the attack, for the purpose of purification;
ordered the healthy to wash themselves frequently with vinegar or
wine, to sprinkle their dwellings with vinegar, and to smell often
to camphor, or other volatile substances. Hereupon he gave, after
the Arabian fashion, detailed rules, with an abundance of
different medicines, of whose healing powers wonderful things were
believed. He had little stress upon super-lunar influences, so
far as respected the malady itself; on which account, he did not
enter into the great controversies of the astrologers, but always
kept in view, as an object of medical attention, the corruption of
the blood in the lungs and heart. He believed in a progressive
infection from country to country, according to the notions of the
present day; and the contagious power of the disease, even in the
vicinity of those affected by plague, was, in his opinion, beyond
all doubt. On this point intelligent contemporaries were all
agreed; and, in truth, it required no great genius to be convinced
of so palpable a fact. Besides, correct notions of contagion have
descended from remote antiquity, and were maintained unchanged in
the fourteenth century. So far back as the age of Plato a
knowledge of the contagious power of malignant inflammations of