PLAGUE AND EPIDEMIC DISEASES.

Section 1.

Plagues.

Several Hebrew words are translated by the word plague in the Old Testament, and as used in both the Old Testament and New Testament the term is of very wide signification. Indeed, this and corresponding terms, such as pest and pestilence in modern language, have been employed to denote not only various malignant diseases, but also both moral and physical evil of various kinds. The English word plague and the Latin plaga are derived from the Greek πληγή, and this from the verb, the radical meaning of which is to strike or smite. When now used with the definite article to denote the historic fatal form of epidemic malignant fever, it is equivalent to the Greek λοιμός, and to the pestis and pestilenza of modern language. Hippocrates and the earlier medical writers do not appear to have used the term with precision, as denoting only one form of malignant epidemic disease. But what is now understood as the plague or true 'bubo-plague' has characters as distinct as those of small-pox or scarlatina, and maybe traced probably as far back as the third century B. C. Oribasius gives a quotation from Rufus, showing that in the time of a physician called Dionysius (about B. C. 277?), a certain disease was known and described as 'pestilentes bubones maxime letales et acuti, qui maxime circa Libyam et Egyptum et Syriam observantur.' and the description which Rufus gives of the disease, as seen by certain physicians in Libya about the time of the Christian era, leaves no doubt as to this being what is now called the plague or true bubo-plague. It is therefore probable that this pestilence existed in Egypt even in the time of the Exodus, though there are no sufficient marks given us in the Mosaic record to enable us to identify any of the diseases spoken of as the plague with that which is now so called, and which has from time to time so fearfully ravaged various countries. There is abundant evidence that the word which our translators have rendered by the term plague is employed to denote divers calamities and diseases of various kinds, inflicted by God. In Numbers xiv. 37 we read that 'those men that did bring up the evil report upon the land died by the plague before the Lord;' but we have no means of determining what may have been meant by these words, though by the Jews very graphic descriptions have been given of the symptoms in those who died.

In Numbers xi. 31 et seq. we have an account of the mortality that ensued on the eating of the quails given to satisfy the people's lust for flesh. 'And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least gathered ten homers; and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp. And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was ) chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague. And he called the name of that place Kibroth Hattaavah, because there they buried the people that lusted.'

The quail (cotnrnix) belongs to the family Tetraonidœ, and is still seen in Egypt and Arabia Petraea. The naturalist Hasselquist considered the bird he saw in Galilee to have special characteristics, and called it tetrao - Israelitorum; but Col. Sykes says¹ that our common quail is the identical species on which the Israelites fed, and if so the bird was then, as now, migratory, passingat certain seasons from one country and district to another in search of food. The quail was an article of food with the Romans, though Pliny says that there was a prejudice against it, based on the supposition that it was often poisonous, from feeding on hellebore and poisonous seeds, as in our time grouse arid other game have sometimes proved to be. Quails are not very abundant with us, our chief supply coming from France. Vast flocks pass over to the islands and shores on the European side of the Mediterranean, so that methods of wholesale slaughter are had recourse to. There is nothing therefore incredible in the Scripture statement that the birds came with a change of wind in enormous flocks, and covered the ground to a great extent. In verse 33, where the term plague is used, the words admit of being rendered, 'the Lord smote the people with a very heavy stroke,' but the former part of the verse implies that death ensued very rapidly on the eating of the longed-for supply of flesh, for the people died 'while it was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed.' It is therefore quite possible that the birds may have met with deleterious food on their new feeding-ground. But as figurative language, the words may merely imply that the people had scarcely swallowed the food ere they became ill; and from the description of the enormous numbers of the birds lying on the ground for days in that hot country, it may well be that the flesh was more or less putrid when devoured by the greedy multitude.

The sudden advent of quails in vast multitudes in such a locality, and the great mortality that directly ensued on the eating of them, are quite sufficient to show that it was by ' a very heavy stroke ' from the hand of Jehovah that the people perished, that this was indeed a 'sore plague' with which the murmurers were visited.

Prior to the miraculous destruction of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, Moses in very remarkable words gives the people a test whereby they might know that he had been sent of God ' to do all these works:² If these men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men, then the Lord hath not sent me. But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit, then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord.'

There appears to be here an important distinction made between the stroke by which Korah and his fellows were smitten and the subsequent 'plague' that destroyed 14,700 of the people. Yet it seems very improbable that this sudden and fearful mortality resulted from any form of pestilence with which we are acquainted. We are not informed within what period of time so large a number of people were carried off, but it would appear to have been very brief. The command to Moses was imperative: 'Get you up from among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment;' and the directions of Moses to Aaron were equally urgent: 'Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the Lord; the plague is begun.' The action of Aaron on receiving these instructions "is equally prompt and energetic. He 'ran into the midst of the congregation; and, behold, the plague was begun among the people: and he put on incense, and made an atonement for the people. And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed.'

If this visitation was after the kind that visiteth all men, the only forms of pestilence with which we could, as at all likely, compare it would be either the true bubo-plague or Asiatic cholera. But though the Greek and Roman physicians have been supposed to have described the latter disease, I am not aware of, any evidence of cholera having existed in Egypt in ancient times, nor indeed have we any authentic information beyond the brief reference which we have cited from Rufus, of the existence of the true plague in Egypt B. C. It is not considered at all certain that the Athenian epidemic during the Peloponnesian war, described by Thucydides, was the true or bubo-plague, of which the earliest authentic records Hirsch thinks date only from the sixth century.³ From that time and through the Middle Ages it has prevailed not only as an epidemic but as a pandemic disease, its headquarters having been Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor.

The black death of the Middle Ages, which ravaged these islands, as well as other European countries, is generally supposed to have been a form of bubo-plague characterised by special features, especially vomiting and spitting of blood and gangrenous inflammation of the lungs, rendering the breath horribly offensive and pestiferous. Other epidemiologists, however, consider the black death, or black plague, as it was sometimes called, to have been a distinct pestilence, originating in. Cathay (China), and which disappeared with the fourteenth century.

The leading characteristics of true or bubo-plague may be briefly stated as a highly contagious malignant fever, attended by sudden and extreme prostration of all the powers, a leaden, sunken look of the eyes, erysipelatous inflammation of the skin, buboes, carbuncles, and petechial patches, with diarrhœa. It need scarcely be noted that we have no evidence of any such symptoms in those instances of fatal plague recorded in the Old Testament.

Small-pox is a disease of comparatively recent origin, and typhoid fever and analogous fevers, to which the wars and famines of the Dark Ages gave rise and rendered so fatal, have been the attendants of social conditions altogether different from those of the Israelites. But whilst the outbreak of all forms of epidemic pestilence may be more or less sudden in particular localities, it is only as they spread among the people of a district that any great mortality ensues, which again diminishes as the epidemic gradually subsides.

In making choice from the three forms of punishment offered to David⁴ for his numbering of the people, he selected that of 'three days' pestilence,' saying, 'Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, for His mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man. So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed: and there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men.' In the subsequent account of David's contrition and offering of his burnt-offering, this pestilence is spoken of as the plague. 'The Lord was entreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.'

Here we have an account of a pestilence which more accords with the outbreak and spread of an epidemic disease throughout the land, lasting some days, the particular nature of which it would be vain to discuss, but which may have been brought about by some sudden atmospheric change, as in certain severe outbreaks of fatal influenza.

There is nothing in the great mortality attending the scriptural instances at all unlike that which has been seen in epidemics of the bubo-plague. In the London epidemic of 1625 no less than 34,000 died, and in 1665, since which time the disease has disappeared from our country, 10,000 died; 40,000 in Marseilles in 1720, and 43,000 in Messina in 1743. In many cases death occurred within twenty-four hours, and in many more within the third to the sixth day. Such visitations have generally lasted many months, and the mortality has always been greatest at the commencement. The same may be said of Asiatic cholera. But in all the mortality has been spread over a much longer period than in the case of any of the Biblical plagues.

What interpretation we are to put on the vivid description of Zechariah,⁵ of the plague with which the Lord threatens to ' smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem,' it is very difficult to say. 'Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.'If the description be not altogether metaphorical, may it be intended to describe an army dying of famine? For the subsequent verses show that the same plague was to fall on the cattle of the enemy, as in the fifth plague of Egypt there was to be a grievous murrain of cattle.

We need not refer to various passages where moral evil is spoken of as a plague, such as 1 Kings viii. 37, 38, where 'the plague of his own heart,' which every man should know, is associated with famine, pestilence, and whatsoever plague and whatsoever sickness there may be among the people. The wicked, we are told in Ps. lxxiii, 'are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men.'

From time immemorial the various pestilences with which nations have been visited have been looked on as Divine judgments, which they have sought to avert by sacrifices, penances, and prayers. And this acknowledgment may have been the origin of the use of the word plague, or stroke, as applicable to all and every form of destructive pestilence, and even of every special individual affliction. 'The arrow that flieth by day' is a figurative expression used by the Arabs, who speak of the pestilence as ' God's arrow, which will always hit his mark' and 'What, is not the plague the dart of Almighty God, and can we escape the blow that He levels at us? Is not His hand steady to hit the person He aims at?'

Section II.

Boils and Blains.

The sixth plague with which Pharaoh and the people of Egypt were visited for refusing to let the Israelites depart is thus described in Exodus ix. 8, et seq.: 'And the Lord said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Take to you handfuls of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle it toward the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh.

'And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast, throughout all the land of Egypt.

'And they took ashes of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses sprinkled it up toward heaven; and it became a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast.

'And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils; for the boil was upon the magicians, and upon all the Egyptians.

'And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had spoken unto Moses.'

The word which our translators here render boils is by the Septuagint termed ἕλκη, elsewhere rendered sore, or ulcer, the Hebrew word being שְׁחִין. Blains in the Greek is rendered φλυκτίὸες, phlyctenœ of medical writers, the Hebrew being אֲבֵעְבֻּעָד.

In the tenth verse the words, 'and it became a boil breaking forth with blains,' are in the Greek ἐγένετο ἕλκη φλυκτίδες ἀναζέουσαι. These words have been by some authorities rendered, 'they became cutaneous eruptions accompanied by inflammation' breaking out. By Dathe the Hebrew is rendered 'ulcera tumescentia,' and by Rosenmuller 'inflammatio pustulas emittens.' The same Greek word cAko? is used to designate Hezekiah's disease, called boil in the A.V. This seems to be the most appropriate rendering in the case of the plague now under consideration; and the Old Saxon word blain, which is equivalent to bleb, or blister, is equally appropriate to express the sense of phlyctenœ.

Boils and carbuncles are analogous diseases; their pathology is essentially the same, so far as regards the character of the inflammation occasioning the local affection. In both it is attended by much heat and pain, and in both leads to death or sloughing of the central parts, constituting in the boil what is called the ' core,' and in carbuncles to more extensive gangrene and sloughing both of the deep-seated structures and of the skin itself, so as to produce an extensive and deep open ulcer of a formidable character.

Boils, however (furunculi), are generally a comparatively trifling disease and unattended by constitutional disturbance. They may occur either singly, or in succession, are more frequent at certain seasons than at others, and sometimes assume an epidemic character. For the most part they are confined to particular regions of the surface, though occasionally distributed over the body. During the early stage of acute inflammation, the point of the swelling is often occupied by a small blister, and after the dead tissues have obtained exit there remains, for some time, a small scar marking the central spot.

A carbuncle is always a much more formidable disease. Anthrax and charbon (Fr.) are the nosological terms by which it is now commonly designated. The local inflammation is generally considered to have a specific character, i.e. induced by a poisoned or morbid state of the blood, and therefore associated with constitutional symptoms endangering the life of the patient. The most usual seat of the local inflammation is the back, or back of the neck, and the swelling from the first is more extended and undefined than in the case of an ordinary boil. A vesicle or vesicles arise on the prominent livid portion of the swelling, which after bursting and discharging a thin serum, reveal numerous openings, whence a purulent discharge issues for some days, till at length more or less extensive portions of dead tissue slough out, and leave a deep excavated ulcer. The scar after healing is generally more or less uneven, livid, and permanent. There is another carbuncular disease often called ' malignant pustule,' which requires notice for our present purpose, because it prevails among cattle and is very destructive. It is sometimes called 'splenic fever,' and, according to modern pathological views, is due to the presence in the blood of a particular microbe termed bacilhis anthracis. Having been frequently communicated to man by the handling of wool from the diseased sheep, it is sometimes called 'wool-sorters' disease,' and in Siberia the 'Siberian plague.'

This disease, when occurring in man, so far as we at present know, is derived either from direct or indirect transmission from the lower animals, horned cattle or sheep. It appears to be endemic in certain regions, and often assumes an epidemic character. It has been investigated with remarkable skill and success by the distinguished man whose name and reputation are worldwide, M. Pasteur. Among other remarkable discoveries he has shown that this particular bacillus may be propagated in the earth around the carcases of buried infected animals, and then brought to the surface through the medium of earth worms, and thus distributed on the pasture where animals previously healthy are feeding. Treatment has hitherto proved of little value where the disease has taken possession of the system, and prevention becomes all-important. But this is surrounded by difficulties in consequence of the infecting agent being often imported from a distance by means of wool; hair, and hides. Thus, from time to time, we have outbreaks of anthrax in this and other countries that prove fearfully destructive to our cattle, and entail serious loss to the agriculturist.

We have no records of epidemic boils or carbuncles in ancient literature, that I am aware of. But since the early part of the last century there have been various accounts of such outbreaks in which boils, carbuncles, and whitlows have been intermixed. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, and since then, various accounts have been given of Oriental boils and other sores, which have received various special names from the countries in which they occurred and other circumstances; thus we have the Aleppo boil, the Bagdad sore, and in Delhi a boil disease has been prevalent from time immemorial which is now named 'Arungzebe,' after the prince who reigned there in the eighteenth century, and who is said to have died of the boil. The so-called Aleppo boil is still prevalent, not only in Syria and Mesopotamia, but also at Suez and Cairo, as well as in Central Asia. A very general opinion obtains that in all the places where the disease exists, it is of local endemic origin, and is introduced to the bodies of the people by the drinking water; facts which strongly support the theory that it is of parasitic origin, whether the original habitat of the parasite be in the water or the soil.

In connexion with the last observation, it is deserving of notice that the sixth plague of boils and blains was inflicted after the miraculous conversion of the water of all the rivers and streams and ponds into blood, whatever interpretation may be given of that word; so that the fish that was in the river died, and the river stank,, and the people loathed to drink of the water. But, apart from all consideration of the question of parasitic organisms, it is fair to infer that the health of the people may thus have been so deteriorated as to render them prone to disease, especially as the murrain of cattle followed the drinking of the foul water, and exposed the people to the well-known risks from the consumption of diseased meat. Nor must we forget the nature of the other plagues that preceded the sixth, the plagues of frogs, lice, and flies. The health of the whole country, so far as regarded the Egyptians, could not fail to have been seriously affected thereby. The frogs, we are told, ' died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields. And they gathered them together upon heaps, and the land stank.' Of the lice it is said, ' All the dust of the land became lice in man and beast.' By the fourth plague, 'there came a grievous swarm of flies into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants' houses, and into all the land of Egypt; the land was corrupted (or destroyed) by reason of the swarm of flies.' The conclusion seems inevitable that by such dire inflictions the whole country must have become so insalubrious as to render the inhabitants apt recipients of almost any disease, whilst the Israelites, shut up in the land of Goshen, were protected even from the flies that pass so easily through the air, and had no need to feed on tainted cattle. We are not told what intervals may have elapsed between the several plagues, but the consequences would be such as assuredly would not prove of short duration as regards the health of the people. Without, therefore, throwing doubt on the miraculous character of the sixth any more than of the other plagues, we are justified in concluding that the Egyptians were in such a state of deteriorated health as to render them eminently predisposed to the different forms of carbuncular disease. It is only in accordance with the action of the Divine Governor in other instances to make natural laws subservient to His special purposes, whether of mercy or judgment.

In support of the view that the boils and blains of this sixth plague may have been analogous to the anthrax now known as the splenic disease of cattle, it is deserving of notice that the immediately preceding plague was the murrain by which ' all the cattle of Egypt died.' On the parasitic theory, the Egyptians by contact with and eating of such cattle might become infected with the bacilhis anthracis, or some similar microbe, and present the well-known phenomena of boils and blisters. It must, however, be observed that no mention is made of any ensuing mortality. It is merely said that the ' magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils; for the boil was upon the magicians, and upon all the Egyptians.'

Attempts have been made to identify this sixth plague with the small-pox. But in the first place it must be affirmed that we have no evidence whatever that the variola, or small-pox, existed in the Mosaic era. That it existed in China before it was known in Europe is generally allowed, and immemorial traditions are said to exist among the Brahmins of its existence in India, and it has been conjectured that it was from India that the disease passed both into Europe and Africa. The keenest discussions have been held as to whether the disease was known to the earliest medical writers. Rhazes in his treatise of the tenth century, De Variolis et Morbidis,⁶ is believed to be the first medical authority who gives an unambiguous account, and who quotes fragments from an Alexandrian physician Ahron, of the date of the fifth or sixth century. But Rhazes and subsequent writers speak of the disease as generally known throughout the East. Those who, like Dr. Baron in his life of Jenner, have taken the view that small-pox was the sixth Egyptian plague, have attributed great importance to a passage from Philo the Jew, who lived in the first century, and who has given us a description of the plague of boils and blains according to his view.⁷

The passage from Philo is as follows: 'Clouds of dust being suddenly raised, and striking against both man and beast, caused ill-looking ulcers over almost the whole skin; so that immediately an efflorescent eruption made its appearance on the surface of the body, which became swollen and abounding with purulent pustules, and which you might almost think boiled in consequence of some sudden heat; but if they suffered thus much in body, they suffered more, or certainly not less, in mind, being oppressed and worn down with pain and anguish, as there appears reason, on account of the inflammation and ulceration. For to one regarding those cases, in which the pustules were scattered over the body and limbs, and run together in one mass, it appeared as if they were a continual ulcer from head to foot.' Whether this passage justified Dr. Willan in saying that it contains a lively and accurate description of small-pox may be doubted. But even so, there is still more doubt whether it can be justly applied to the plague of boils and blains as described by Moses. Nor would this application receive further support, were we to attempt any more detailed description of so well-known a disease as small-pox, which could not have failed to entail so great a mortality among the people as to have demanded mention by the sacred historian.

Section III.

Fevers and Inflammations.

The Hebrew, Greek and Latin words for fever all indicate a burning heat, and it is from the Latin febris that our word fever has been derived. Along with this characteristic feature there are associated quickness of pulse and disturbance of function of the various organs of the body in all fevers.

Febrile disorders are among the most common diseases of the East, and have been from the earliest times. They are, however, of various kinds and of different origin. In many cases the febrile symptoms are only symptomatic of some local inflammation, though by non-professional observers they would often be called simply fever. In others the fever originates in some specific deleterious agent, introduced from without and acting as a poison on the whole system, giving rise either to a febrile state lasting continuously for a definite period, as in typhus or small-pox, or to an intermittent febrile condition,, as in common ague. To determine to which of these kinds of fever any particular case should be referred, would require much more detailed descriptions than are given to us in the Bible. We know, however, that malarious diseases, which are more or less distinctly intermittent or remittent in character, have from the earliest times been prevalent both in Egypt and Palestine. We know also that epidemic fevers of a contagious kind, and spreading independent of local causes, have from time to time prevailed, constituting often what we have spoken of under the head of plagues.

In Deut. xxviii. 21, 20^ we may perhaps discern all these forms of fever. In verse 21 we read, 'The Lord shall make the pestilence (θάνατος) (דֶּבֶר) cleave unto thee, until He have consumed thee from off the land.' (A. and R. V.) This may very probably be supposed to denote either the true Oriental plague, or an analogous epidemic destroying multitudes of people. The 'consumption' (ἀπορία), if it refer to disease at all, may imply the hopeless wasting hectic fever of pulmonary and some other diseases. ' And with a fever ' (A. V.) (πυρετός) may denote some form of continued fever; 'and with an inflammation' (A. V.) (ῥίγει), the rigor and following heat of intermittent malarious fever, as this is the Greek word used by Hippocrates to denote a paroxysm of ague. 'And with fiery heat ' (R. V.) or an ' extreme burning' (A. V.) (ἐρεθισμῷ), some of the various forms of cutaneous inflammation, attended by heat and irritation, such as what is called 'prickly heat.' This appears to be the sense in which the word was employed by Hippocrates.

In Leviticus xxvi. 16 we have again consumption allied with 'burning ague' in A. V., and with 'fever' in R. V., and by the LXX rendered ψώρα, a word used by medical writers to denote ' itch,' which is often attended by great heat and irritation.

The writing which the prophet Elijah sent to King Jehoram⁸ says, ' Behold, with a great plague will the Lord smite thy people and thy children and thy wives and all thy goods. And thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of the sickness day by day.' There can be little doubt that epidemic dysentery is here denoted. The fever and inflammation of the lining membrane of the bowels which attend that disease are often of a very severe character, and marked by such discharges from the bowels as to lead the ignorant to suppose that the bowels themselves are cast out. In Jehoram's case the disease assumed a chronic form ere it ended fatally. 'And after all this the Lord smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease. And it came to pass, that in process of time, after the end of two years, his bowels fell out by reason of his sickness: so he died of sore diseases.'⁹

In Acts xxviii. 8 we have recorded the healing of the father of Publius by the apostle Paul. This man in the A. V. is said to have lain ' sick of a fever, and of a bloody flux,' and in the R. V. 'of fever and dysentery.' But St. Luke employs the plural (πυρετοῖς) in describing the fever, and doubtless does so with his usual accuracy. It is not, however, very clear what is implied by this use of the plural form. It is well known that dysentery is frequently associated with malarious intermittent fevers; it is therefore possible that the plural form was used to indicate merely the recurring paroxysms of the aguish disease; or it may imply that in addition to the febrile signs of the malarious disease, the severity of the dysentery kept up that state of fever which accompanies all forms of inflammatory disorder, and that the patient had thus a double form of fever, symptomatic and essential, as they would be termed.

The words (πυρετὸς μέγας) used by St. Luke¹⁰ to characterise the ' great fever' of which Simon's wife's mother lay sick, has very properly been cited as another instance in evidence of the accuracy of language employed by the physician when speaking of disease. Fevers were divided by Galen and the Greek physicians into greater and lesser, and there can be little doubt that the disease, in this case, was some form of continued and probably malignant fever. The miraculous nature of the cure is therefore more manifest, when it is said that ' immediately she arose and ministered unto them.' For on the ordinary subsidence of a 'great fever' the debility and prostration are such that many days would elapse ere the invalid would be capable of rising to minister.

So again in the case of the nobleman's son (John iv. 52), who was at the point of death when Jesus said to the distressed father, 'Go thy way, thy son liveth,' we are told that at the same hour the fever (πυρετός) left him. Assuming from the single word employed to designate the disease that it was in this instance also a continued fever rapidly passing to a fatal termination, the sudden departure, not mere amendment of the fever, could only have been miraculous. The nobleman enquired of his servants who met him the hour when his son 'began to amend;' and they replied, 'Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him,' that being the hour at which Jesus had said, 'Thy son liveth.' The supposition that the sudden departure of the fever merely indicated the termination of a paroxysm of intermittent fever is inconsistent with the whole tenour of the account given us.

1) Zool. Trans, vol. ii.

2) Numbers xvi. 28-30,

3) Hirsch, ch. ii. 'Plague.'

4) 2 Sam. xxiv. 12.

5) Zech. xiv. 12.

6) Eng. Trans, by Greenhill. Syd. Soc. 1848.

7) Vita Mosis, i. 22.

8) 2 Chron. xxi. 12 et seq.

9) It would only be in accordance with medical experience if portions of the intestines had mortified and been cast out.

10) Luke iv. 38, 39.