sunshine, so that by means of the one or the other, the morbific
vapour might be destroyed. No one was to venture to make use of
clothes or beds out of infected dwellings unless they had been
previously washed and dried either at the fire or in the sun.
People were, likewise, to avoid, as long as possible, occupying
houses which had been frequented by plague-patients.

We cannot precisely perceive in these an advance towards general
regulations; and perhaps people were convinced of the
insurmountable impediments which opposed the separation of open
inland countries, where bodies of people connected together could
not be brought, even by the most obdurate severity, to renounce
the habit of profitable intercourse.

Doubtless it is nature which has done the most to banish the
Oriental plague from western Europe, where the increasing
cultivation of the earth, and the advancing order in civilised
society, have prevented it from remaining domesticated, which it
most probably was in the more ancient times.

In the fifteenth century, during which it broke out seventeen
times in different places in Europe, it was of the more
consequence to oppose a barrier to its entrance from Asia, Africa,
and Greece (which had become Turkish); for it would have been
difficult for it to maintain itself indigenously any longer.
Among the southern commercial states, however, which were called
on to make the greatest exertions to this end, it was principally
Venice, formerly so severely attacked by the Black Plague, that
put the necessary restraint upon perilous profits of the merchant.
Until towards the end of the fifteenth century, the very