The Black Death in the fourteenth century / from the German of I.F.C. Hecker ; tr. by B.G. Babington.

  • Hecker, J. F. C. (Justus Friedrich Carl), 1795-1850.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Black Death in the fourteenth century / from the German of I.F.C. Hecker ; tr. by B.G. Babington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    shall even then find our views too narrow, and be compelled* in our endeavours to explain the facts, to acknowledge the ex- istence of unknown powers, wholly uncon- nected either with communication by con- tact or atmospheric contamination. I by no means wish it to be understood, that I have adopted the author's views re- specting astral and telluric influences, the former of which, at least, I had supposed to have been, with alchemy and magic, long since consigned to oblivion; much less am I prepared to accede to his notion, or rather an ancient notion derived from the East and revived by him, of an organic life in the system of the universe. We are constantly furnished with proofs, that that which affects life is not itself alive; and whether we look to the earth for exhalations, to the air for electrical phenomena, to the heavenly bodies for an influence over our planet, or to all these causes combined, for the form- ation of some unknown principle noxious to animal existence, still, if we found our