Note 3 — Chapter I

There was no just cause for surprise in these periodical visitations. The thinkers of the day understood the connection between cleanliness and health; and the following will show that such as these hit on the right source of pestilence:—

“I often wonder,” says Erasmus in a letter to Dr. Francis, “and not without concern, whence it comes to pass, that England for so many years hath been continually afflicted with pestilence, and above all, with the sweating sickness, which seems in a manner peculiar to that country.... They glaze a great part of the sides with small panes, designed to admit the light and exclude the wind; but these windows are full of chinks, through which enters a percolated air, which stagnating in the room, is more noxious than the wind.

“As to the floors, they are usually made of clay, covered with rushes that grew in fens, which are so slightly removed now and then, that the lower part remains sometimes for twenty years together, and in it a collection of spittle, vomit, urine of dogs and men, beer, scraps of fish, and other filthiness not to be named. Hence, upon change of weather, a vapour is exhaled very pernicious, in my opinion, to the human body.”