During the 14th century the Jews were regarded as responsible for the disease, through poisoning wells, and were subjected to the most incredible persecution and torture. In Milan the visitation of 1630 was credited to the so-called anointers,--men who were supposed to spread the plague by anointing the walls with magic ointment--and the most horrible tortures that human ingenuity could devise were imposed on scores of victims, regardless of rank or of public service (fig. 112, a). Manzoni's great historical novel, "The Betrothed" has well pictured conditions in Italy during this period. [Illustration: 111. A contemporaneous engraving of the pest hospital in Vienna in 1679. After Peters.] In modern times the plague is confined primarily to warm climates, a condition which has been brought about largely through general improvement in sanitary conditions. At present, the hotbed of the disease is India, where there were 1,040,429 deaths in 1904 and where in a period of fifteen years, ending with January 1912, there were over 15,000,000 deaths. The reported deaths in that country for 1913 totaled 198,875. During the winter of 1910-11 there occurred in Manchuria and North China a virulent epidemic of the pneumonic plague which caused the death of nearly 50,000 people. The question as to its origin and means of spread will be especially referred to later. [Illustration: 112 a. A medieval method of combating the plague. The persecution of the anointers in Milan in 1630. From a copy of "Il processi originale degli untori" in the library of Cornell University.] Until recent years, the plague had not been known to occur in the New World but there were outbreaks in Brazil and Hawaii in 1899, and in 1900 there occurred the first cases in San Francisco. In California there were 125 cases in the period 1900-04; three cases in the next three years and then from May 1907 to March 1908, during the height of the outbreak, 170 cases. Since that time there have been only sporadic cases, the last case reported being in May 1914. Still more recent were the outbreaks in the Philippine Islands, Porto Rico, and Cuba. On June 24, 1914, there was recognized a case of human plague in New Orleans. The Federal Health Service immediately took charge, and measures for the eradication of the disease were vigorously enforced. Up to October 10, 1914 there had been reported 30 cases of the disease in man, and 181 cases of plague in rats. [Illustration: 112 b. The modern method of combating the plague. A day's catch of rats in the fight against plague in San Francisco. Courtesy of Review of Reviews.] The present-day methods of combating bubonic plague are well illustrated by the fight in San Francisco. Had it not been for the strenuous and radical anti-plague campaign directed by the United States Marine Hospital Service we might have had in our own country an illustration of what the disease can accomplish. On what newly acquired knowledge was this fight based?