Volume 1
A brief history of epidemic and pestilential diseases; with the principal phenomena of the physical world, which precede and accompany them, and observations deduced from the facts stated / By Noah Webster.
- Noah Webster
- Date:
- 1799
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A brief history of epidemic and pestilential diseases; with the principal phenomena of the physical world, which precede and accompany them, and observations deduced from the facts stated / By Noah Webster. Source: Wellcome Collection.
24/366 page 14
![EE narium,] like a fubtle fermentum or leaven, fent from heaven, in a very {mall quantity, diffufing itfelf through the air like a fubtle gas, and rendering it impure. This gas, he fuppofes to fpread over many regions its numerous particles, and to imprefs on the air an infection like poifon, which often affects not only many perfons, but almoft the whole world. However whimfical we may think this author’s explanation of the peftilent principle; that fome fuch general caufe exifts in the atmofphere, at certain periods, will be rendered very probable, if not certain, by the faéts hereafter to be related. The ‘ feminarium e coelo demiffum’’ of Diemerbroeck feems to be the éo theion of Hippocrates... In what the effence of this principle confifts, is not known ; but there muft be an alteration in the chymical properties of the atmofphere to folve the diffi- culties that attend our inquiries into the caufe of peftilence.— That this alteration is the effect of a poifon,. *¢ e coelo demiffum,”’ is an hypothefis unfupported by faéts and wholly incredible. The third caufe of peftilence, mentioned by this author, is infection. Diemerbroeck alfo maintains the diftin@ion between peffis and peftilentia, ‘The latter is fuppofed to proceed from foul exhala- tions, intemperate feafons and the like. But the plague, he contends, cannot be occafioned by thofe caufes, tho thefe may aid the feminarivm or general caufe, Van Helmont, a Flemifh writer of fome celebrity, in the laft century, maintains thar the plague cannot be afcribed to the ** importunate and unfeafonable changes of times, nor to pu- trefaction ;” that the ‘* poifon of the plague is a far fecret one from any other ;” that the “‘ matter of that difeafe is a wild fpirit tinged with poifon, exhaling from a difeafed perfon, or drawn inwards from a gas of the earth putrified by continuance, and receiving internally an appropriate ferment, and by degrees attaining a peftilent poifon in us.?? “ The remote, crude and firft occafional matter of the peftilence, is an air putrified thro’ continuance, or rather a hoary putrified gas, which putrefaction of the air, hath not the 8200th part of its feminal body.’ This explanation feems to be hardly intelligible. Works, Lond, Edit. 1662, p. 1085, 1090, 110%, 1125,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3288672x_0001_0024.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
