Doctor Mead's Short discourse explain'd. Being a clearer account of pestilential contagion, and preventing ... / [Anon].

Date:
1721
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Doctor Mead's Short discourse explain'd. Being a clearer account of pestilential contagion, and preventing ... / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Concurrence of Caufes; and their firft EffeB is a Degree of Stagnation in the oAir, which is follow’d by Corruption, and PutrefaQdon. It is needlefs to enter upon this Hint of a new Hypothecs; for if his Machine of Contagion* or Infe£fion3 be good, thefe are unneceflary. But alas ! the celebrated D oft or lias, in the Conclufion, deftroy’d the whole Fabrick he had rear’d with fb much Trouble, after he had borrow’d Brick from one, Mortar from another, and Timber from a third ; and on- ly becaufe he became, againft Nature and his own Genius, a Mafter-Builder. Is a Con¬ currence of all the fuppofed Caufes neceffary to make a Plague ? Then there never was a Blague in the World ; and that becaufe thefe Caufes never all met together : A hopeful Conclufion! and which at once delivers the World of mfufferable Feats, they hitherto groan’d under, by a vulgar Error ; which is now contrary to Experience, becaufe it is fo to Dr* Mead's Reafoning. Hippocrates, on the other Hand, under¬ takes only to relate the Conftitution of the Year when Tlagues and Fevers were very fre¬ quent ; he never thought of making any particular Conftitution, or the Weather in it, the Caufe of Plagues univerfally : If he had, Experience fhould have Shewn the contrary, to which he would have fuhmitted. But not to enter into any other Conftitutions that might happen in Greece, Experience cries'