The cause of the evil is the fertility of their land, which produces too much corn. It is a melancholy and deplorable case that even the blessing of heaven should in fact have involved them in such direful calamity. Some of the provinces have contended that it was absolutely necessary to put leaven in their bread, but the greater part of the nation entertain an obstinate and unalterable belief, that, on certain days of the year, fermented bread is absolutely mortal. Such is one of the principal causes of the schism or the rending asunder of Poland; the dispute has infused acrimony into their blood. Other causes have added to the effect. Some have imagined, in the paroxysms and convulsions of the malady under which they labor, that the Holy Spirit proceeded both from the Father and the Son: and the others have exclaimed, that it proceeded from the Father only. The two parties, one of which is called the Roman party, and the other the Dissident, look upon each other as if they were absolutely infected by the plague; but, by a singular symptom peculiar to this complaint, the infected Dissidents have always shown an inclination to approach the Catholics, while the Catholics on the other hand have never manifested any to approach them. There is no disease which does not vary in different circumstances and situations. The diet, which is generally esteemed salutary, has been so pernicious to this unhappy nation, that after the application of it in 1768, the cities of Uman, Zablotin, Tetiou, Zilianki, and Zafran were destroyed and inundated with blood; and more than two hundred thousand patients miserably perished. On one side the empire of Russia, and on the other that of Turkey, have sent a hundred thousand surgeons provided with lancets, bistouries, and all sorts of instruments, adapted to cut off the morbid and gangrened parts; but the disease has only become more virulent. The delirium has even been so outrageous, that forty of the patients actually met together for the purpose of dissecting their king, who had never been attacked by the disease, and whose brain and all the vital and noble parts of his body were in a perfectly sound state, as we shall have to remark under the article on "Superstition." It is thought that if the contending parties would refer the case entirely to him, he might effect a cure of the whole nation; but it is one of the symptoms of this cruel malady to be afraid of being cured, as persons laboring under hydrophobia dread even the sight of water.