“It must, therefore, in these days be, to a humane and thinking person, a matter of equal wonder and satisfaction, when he contemplates how nearly this pest is eradicated, and observes that a leper is now [1778] a rare sight. He will, moreover, when engaged in such a train of thought, naturally inquire for the reason. This happy change perhaps may have originated and been continued from the much smaller quantity of salted meat and fish now eaten in these kingdoms; from the use of linen next the skin; from the plenty of bread; and from the profusion of fruits, roots, legumes, and greens, so common in every family. Three or four centuries ago, before there were any enclosures, sown-grasses, field-turnips, or field-carrots, or hay, all the cattle which had grown fat in summer, and were not killed for winter use, were turned out soon after Michaelmas to shift as they could through the dead months; so that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring. Hence the marvellous account of vast stores of salted flesh found in the larder of the eldest Spencer even so late in the spring as the 3rd of May (600 bacons, 80 carcases of beef, and 600 muttons)[207]. It was from magazines like these that the turbulent barons supported in idleness their riotous swarms of retainers, ready for any disorder or mischief. But agriculture is now arrived at such pitch of perfection, that our best and fattest meats are killed in the winter; and no man needs eat salted flesh, unless he prefers it, that has money to buy fresh. “One cause of this distemper might be no doubt the quantity of wretched fresh and salt fish consumed by the commonalty at all seasons as well as in Lent, which our poor now would hardly be persuaded to touch.... The plenty of good wheaten bread that now is found among all ranks of people in the south, instead of that miserable sort which used, in old days, to be made of barley or beans, may contribute not a little to the sweetening their blood and correcting their juices.”