Caution to the public, or, hints upon the nature of scarlet fever, designed to shew, that this disease arises from a peculiar and absolute virus, and is specifically infectious in its mildest as well as in its most malignant form : including some cursory remarks upon plague and other pestilential diseases.

Date:: 1831

Credit: Caution to the public, or, hints upon the nature of scarlet fever, designed to shew, that this disease arises from a peculiar and absolute virus, and is specifically infectious in its mildest as well as in its most malignant form : including some cursory remarks upon plague and other pestilential diseases. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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Id no paralleL Yet these, as well as others, which are so constantly presenting themselves to our notice, among the innumerable works of creation, suggest, and enforce the belief, that subtile, and invisible, es- sences may, and do, exist, in other bodies of a gross, and corrupt, nature, with which they are clothed, and in which they have their being, adapting them to the variety of objects with which they may be surround- ed, and to the ends for which they were created. Analogy does not compel us to reject the idea, that a particle of matter, minuter than all conceivable di- mensions, and transparent withal, may just as easily be the seed, or essence, of poisons, as that which constitutes the mere essence of scent. If we were to reject such inferences, we might refuse granting assent to the existence of any particle of matter, or agency, that was impalpable, or imperceptible. It is only what is true of the most important and awful agencies, and operations—for the great powers of nature are all invisible, and depend upon substances, and actions, which are totally concealed from our senses.—See AppendiXy No. 8. In contemplating these phenomena, we are enabled distinctly to comprehend, that a provision has been made, which has been left to act according to laws, which, forming part of a more general and relative system, regulate this particular system, in common with many others observable in the works of nature. To ascertain the several natures of morbid poisons, the aid of pneumatic, and animal chemistry, has been called in ; yet their several processes of analysis have been employed in vain. They have hitherto eluded

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