Dr. Charles Creighton, in his monumental work on epidemics,[127] takes the view that we must receive with some scepticism the extremely unsatisfactory accounts of the condition of old London. He points out that, while Erasmus gives a most repulsive description of the state of the houses, his contemporary and friend, Sir Thomas More, takes a much more flattering view. Dr. Creighton says: 'Some part of the rather unfair opinion as to the foulness of English life in former times may be traced to a well-known letter by Erasmus to the physician of Cardinal Wolsey. There are grounds for believing that Erasmus must have judged from somewhat unfavourable instances.' Dr. Creighton further points out that William Harrison (_Description of England_) gives proof enough that the filthy floors described by Erasmus had no existence two generations later, even among the poorer classes. Fitz-Stephen was quite satisfied with the salubrity of the city, and he becomes enthusiastic over the gardens and clear springs which abounded on all sides, and made the walks of those who took the air in the summer evenings so agreeable. In fine, he says: 'The city is delightful indeed when it has a good governor.' Sir Thomas More at a later period saw so little amiss that he was content to consider London as a fair sample of what he would wish the capital of Utopia to be. We know, at all events, that whatever its faults it was in advance of foreign cities. It has been said that the English word 'comfort' cannot be translated, and a curious confirmation of this is found in the fact that in the old French contemporary account of Wat Tyler's Rebellion the word is introduced in a French context, as if there was no equivalent in that language. Dr. J. W. Tripe, in 1881, took as the subject of his inaugural address on assuming the presidential chair of the Society of Medical Officers of Health: 'The Sanitary Condition and Laws of Mediæval London.' Referring to this, a writer in the _Medical Times and Gazette_ says: 'His description of the streets and houses of Old London, and of the habits of our forefathers, though most graphic, was not new ... but few, we think, have any idea of the antiquity of Sanitary, Nuisance Removal and River Conservancy Acts, and Dr. Tripe has therefore done well to again set forth the accounts of them that have been exhumed from the records of the city. Rude as they may seem to modern notions, they ought to have sufficed for the prevention of the epidemics which from time to time decimated the population, if they had not, like so many more recent enactments, been in advance of the age, and consequently remained for the most part dead letters.'[128] Before entering into particulars as to means taken for the protection of the city from disease, and as to those upon whom the duty was laid of carrying them out, it will be necessary to make a few remarks upon the healing art in the Middle Ages.