sobriety is a powerful means of protection against disease. Filarcus, a citizen of Athens, was singularly struck with this fact: among the rich who lived frugally, drank water alone, and were clothed with the richest garments, moderation and bodily cleanliness were observed to be of the highest importance in maintaining the sensible and insensible perspiration; these functions of secretion and of excretion being essential in order that the integral parts of the blood should preserve its purity, its weight, its normal state of electricity, and natural fluidity, upon which depend the preservation of health and the power of resisting disease in times of epidemics, as is affirmed by medical jurists, and as the ancient Spaniards practised. He continues,--Bathing is also an efficacious means of removing the impurities that opposed the sensible and insensible perspiration; and it would appear that in Spain, long before the Second Punic War, bathing was in general favour. The unmeaning sneer of Diodorus Siculus at the habit of the Spaniards of washing their entire bodies with urine, will be recollected, whilst Galen says that in Syria they avoid the plague by simply drinking that liquid excrement. That the Spaniards used urine advantageously as a topical lotion we shall find in the treatises on baths and other subjects of ancient Spain. Drs. Ribeiro and Sanchez assert, with some foundation, that the use of linen in Europe has caused pestilence to be less frequent; thus, as it were, contributing to the cleanliness which the ancients obtained by the use of their public baths. To a similar cause we may attribute the rarity with which the Spaniards were attacked by the aforesaid frightful pestilence. Catullus, Silius Italicus, and Gratius Faliscus eulogize the vapour baths of the ancient Sætabi: in fine, says Villalba, the sobriety, personal cleanliness, bathing in common water, washing with urine, vapour baths, and the wearing linen garments, with fortitude, concurred powerfully to the immunity enjoyed from disease by our Spanish ancestors. Anno 476 B.C. During this and the succeeding years, says Florian de Ocampo, there prevailed in Spain from time to time a series of pestilences and other minor diseases, by which a multitude of persons perished. The Carthaginians, to appease the ire of the gods to whom they attributed these fatal visitations, offered up human sacrifices, and made incisions on their arms and legs, and on other parts of their bodies: they also immolated cattle of all kinds, according to the severity of the pestilence.