Gradually it dawned both upon Catholic
and Protestant countries that, if any sin be punished by
pestilence, it is the sin of filthiness; more and more it began
to be seen by thinking men of both religions that Wesley's great
dictum stated even less than the truth; that not only was
"cleanliness akin to godliness," but that, as a means of keeping
off pestilence, it was far superior to godliness as godliness was
then generally understood.[[89]]
The recent history of sanitation in all civilized countries
shows triumphs which might well fill us with wonder, did there
not rise within us a far greater wonder that they were so long
delayed. Amazing is it to see how near the world has come again
and again to discovering the key to the cause and cure of
pestilence. It is now a matter of the simplest elementary
knowledge that some of the worst epidemics are conveyed in water.
But this fact seems to have been discovered many times in human
history. In the Peloponnesian war the Athenians asserted that
their enemies had poisoned their cisterns; in the Middle Ages the
people generally declared that the Jews had poisoned their wells;
and as late as the cholera of 1832 the Parisian mob insisted that
the water-carriers who distributed water for drinking purposes
from the Seine, polluted as it was by sewage, had poisoned it,
and in some cases murdered them on this charge: so far did this
feeling go that locked covers were sometimes placed upon the
water-buckets.
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