superior survival rates would have produced a much larger proportion of Christians who were immune, and who could, therefore, pass among the afflicted with seeming invulnerability. In fact, those Christians most active in nursing the sick were likely to have contracted the disease very early and to have survived it as they, in turn, were cared for. In this way was created a whole force of miracle workers to heal the “dying.” And who was to say that it was the soup they so patiently spooned to the