“The causes of this sickness,” he says, “be far and nigh. The far causes--they be the signs or the planets, whose operation is not known of leeches and of phisitions; but of astronomers they be known.... The nigh causes be the stynkynge of the erthe as it is in many places.... For these be great causes of putrefaction: and this corrupteth the air, and so our bodies are infect of that corrupt air.... And it happeneth also, that specially where the air is changed into great heat and moistness, they induceth putrefaction of humours, and namely in the humours of the heart; and so cometh this pestilence, whose coming is unknown, as to them that die sodenley, &c.” Among the causes of the corruption he specially mentions the following, which probably had a real existence in the London of that time, although he is merely reproducing a stock paragraph of foreign origin: “And of stinking carrion cast into the water nigh to cities or towns,--as the bellies of beasts and of fishes, and the corruption of privies--of this the water is corrupt. And when as meat is boiled, and drink made of the water, many sickness is gendered in man’s body; and [so] also of the casting of stinking waters and many other foul things in the streets, the air is corrupt; and of keeping of stinking matters in houses or in latrines long time; and then, in the night, of those things vapour is lift up into the air, the which doth infect the substance of the air, by the which substance the air corrupts and infects men to die suddenly, going by the streets or by the way. Of the which thing let any man that loveth God and his neighbour amend.” He then mentions a more distant source of corrupt air, apt to be carried on the wind--the corruption of unburied bodies after a battle, which enters into all the plague-writings of the time.