The black death and the dancing mania / from the German of J.F.C. Hecker, tr. by B.G. Babington.

  • Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The black death and the dancing mania / from the German of J.F.C. Hecker, tr. by B.G. Babington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    which account, he did not enter into the great contro- versies of the astrologers, but always kept in view, as an object of medical attention, the corruption of the blood in the lungs and heart. He believed in a pro- gressive infection from country to country, according to the notions of the present day; and the contagious power of the disease, even in the vicinity of those affected by plague, was, in his opinion, beyond all doubt. On this point intelligent contemporaries were all agreed; and, in truth, it required no great genius to be [convinced of so palpable a fact. Besides, correct notions of contagion have descended from remote an- tiquity, and were maintained unchanged in the four- teenth century. So far back as the age of Plato a knowledge of the contagious power of malignant inflam- mations of the eye, of which also no physician of the Middle Ages entertained a doubt, was general among the people; yet] in modern times surgeons have filled volumes with partial controversies on this subject. The whole language of antiquity has adapted itself to the notions of the people respecting the contagion of pestilential diseases; and their terms were, beyond comparison, more expressive than those in use among the moderns. Arrangements for the protection of the healthy against contagious diseases, the necessity of which is shown from these notions, were regarded by the an- cients as useful; and by many, whose circumstances
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