the approaching armies

The Lemakot in the north strangled widows and threw them into the cremation pyres of their dead husbands. If they defeated potential invaders the New Irish hanged the vanquished from banyan trees, flensed their windpipes, removed their heads, left their intestines to jerk in the sun.

And its escape [from certain diseases] is an approximative proof that, at least for those ten years, no contagium of measles, “nor any contagium of scarlet fever, nor any contagium of small-pox, had arisen spontaneously" within its limits.

He's got lots of sales pitches in his quiver.