Infectious disease and its prevention / by Shirley F. Murphy.

  • Murphy, Shirley F. (Shirley Forster), Sir, 1848-1923.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Infectious disease and its prevention / by Shirley F. Murphy. 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.

    11/96
    OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND ITS PREVENTION. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE. Writing more than a century and a half ago of the epidemic of plague which prevailed in his boyhood, Daniel Defoe makes the citizen whose adventures he recounts tell of a madness ^'which may serve to give an Idea of the distracted humour of the poor People at that Time—a madness which consisted of ^^ wearing Charms, Philtres, Exorcisms, Amulets, and I know not what Preparations to fortify the Body with them against the Plague, as if the Plague were not the Hand of God, but a kind of a Posses- sion of an evil Spirit; and that it was to be kept off with Crossings, Signs of the Zodiac, Papers tied up with so many knots, and certain Words and Figures written on them, as particularly the Word Abracadabra formed in Triangle or Pyramid. And further, ^* How the poor People found the Insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the Dead- Carts, and thrown into the common Graves of every Parish. The time for belief in such superstition is long past, but if the knowledge of our time is to be judged by t*nat of the greater number, it cannot be said that we are free from much opportunity for criticism. Charms have been aban- doned, but have not always been replaced by more trust- worthy means of protection against disease. We have, [H. 20.] B