The germ of an idea : contagionism, religion, and society in Britain, 1660-1730 / Margaret DeLacy.

New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Milton Keynes : Lightning Source UK Ltd.

xviii, 305 pages ; 23 cm

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-291) and index.

Introduction: medical theory in early modern Europe -- Restoration medicine and the dissenters -- Populist writing on diseases in the late seventeenth century -- The search for middle ground: disease theory as natural history -- Animalcules and animals -- English contagionism and Hans Sloane's circle -- An English treatise on living contagion: Benjamin Marten's new theory of consumptions, 1720 -- Smallpox inoculation and the Royal Society, 1700-1723 -- Contagion and plague in the eighteenth century.