The unspeakable filth of such alleys produced epidemics that almost depopulated the most orthodox countries of medieval Europe. Under the stimulus of clerical theories, those epidemics in their turn produced outbreaks of fanatical superstition, which in pagan Rome would certainly have been ascribed to the influence of a contagious mental disease. Diseases, according to a doctrine which it was deemed blasphemy to doubt, could be averted by prayer and self-humiliation. In spite of a diligent application of such prophylactics, diseases of the most virulent kind became more prevalent. The logical inference seemed that prayer had not been fervent and self-abasement not abject enough. Hordes of religious maniacs roamed the streets of the plague-stricken cities, howling like hyenas and lacerating their bodies in a manner too shocking to describe. After exhausting the available means of subsistence, the blood-smeared, wretches would invade the open country, and by frantic appeals frighten thousands of peasants into joining their ranks, and in carrying the seeds of mental and physical contagion to a neighboring country. In Germany and Holland the total number of “Flagellants” were at one time estimated at three hundred and fifty thousand; on another occasion at more than half a million. If the disease had exhausted its fury, the self-torturers would claim the reward of their services by falling like hungry wolves upon the homes of the sane survivors. If the plague refused to abate, the leading fanatics would ascribe the failure to their followers’ want of zeal, and enforce their theory by an indiscriminate application of a rawhide knout, till the dispute was referred to the arbitrament of cold steel, and the ranks of the howling maniacs were thinned by mutual slaughter. E.—REWARDS.