Part 1

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Doctor MEAD’s

Short DISCOURSE

EXPLAIN’D.

BEING A

Clearer ACCOUNT

Pestilential Contagion,

AND

PREVENTING.

Nec satis est dixisse, ego mira poemata pango.

LONDON:

Printed, and Sold by W. BOREHAM, at the Angel in Pater-noster Row. 1721.

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Dr. MEAD’s Short Discourse EXPLAIN’D.

Many and various are the Opinions about the Design, as well as about the Meaning and real and true Sense of the short Discourse lately writ by the Celebrated Dr. Mead, for preventing the Plague. The various Turns of the Heads of different Men, their different Capacities, and the Sublimity of the Doctor’s Style may, no doubt, occasion all this Variety in understanding Him and his Book. Some, and if we may judge by the great Run and Demand for his Book, the greatest Number of the People of all Ranks expected some Esculapian, but easy Rules, whereby they might govern and conduct their Life against so silent an Enemy as the Pestilence, which walketh in Darkness. This seems to be more than a Conjecture, because this great Demand ceas’d of a sudden, as the Plague it self commonly does, after they found the Physician had no hand in it, or that his Rules were locked up for the Favourites of his Faculty. And as the People commonly make the best Judgment of Things after a little Experience, so we find this Judgment of the Town confirmed, by what his Friends, Adepts, and other Officers, who only understand or declare what Dr. Mead would have believed; and accordingly they labour to declare, that the genuine Meaning and Design of the Celebrated Doctor was, to give a Politick Account, how the Plague may be staved off by Force of Arms.

I grant this Authority is very cogent; yet, on the other hand, if we either consider the Title Page of the Book, the great Accurateness and Veracity of Dr. Mead, as well as his signal Humility, I must crave leave to dissent, at this time, from the Reports of these Men, tho’ they carry his daily and hourly Orders: for how do such Reports sute all those his known good Qualities, the last more especially. Can any Man think it consistent with his singular Humility, to teach the Secretary of State, what has been practised in our own and other Countries for some hundred of Years: Quarantines and Pest-Houses, or if the Doctor pleases, Lazarettoes, are not unknown to English Lawyers, nor English Ministers. And therefore I think it much the fairest Course, to consider the Discourse well, because it is short, and from thence to draw the Sense of its Author.

To do all imaginable Right to Dr. Mead, we will begin with the Title-Page, that nothing material may seem to be neglected. There we find it is to be a Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, and Methods to prevent it. Turning next to the Dedication, he tells his Patron that he rather chuses to put down the principal Heads of Caution, than a Set of Directions in Form. This Head he seems to suggest chiefly to consist in performing Quarantines, and other things that may be collected from History. The next (Head I suppose) is concerning the suppressing Infection here; which he tells us is very different from the Methods taken in former times among us, and from what they commonly do abroad; but (as he very modestly perswades himself) will be found agreeable to Reason. This Account differs very much from the Rumours and Opinions now prevailing in the World; for we are to be entertain’d with a preventing Method, as far as Physick and Politicks extend, and on that Account cannot fail to be very new when finished; because all former Accounts are very defective, the silent Attacks of the Pestilence having been hitherto undiscover’d by all former Physicians. And therefore is there any Person so hard-hearted, or so stupid, that does not rejoyce and prick up his Ears at those ravishing Expressions, who does not desire to be instructed in this Method of preventing this unmerciful Enemy to Mankind. Come on then, and listen to the Celebrated Dr. Mead, who brings Death to Pestilential Contagion; as he is said to have promis’d while he was composing this Work. But we will next follow Dr. Mead into the Book it self, where we find that he thinks it necessary to premise somewhat in general concerning Contagion, and the Manner by which it acts. But alas! we are to meet with nothing but Disappointments, so soon are we fallen from all our Hopes and Expectations: Nothing to be found either of Contagion, or the manner of its acting, tho’ the Title of the Book promises it, and the first entring upon the Discourse declares it to be necessary; This is the very Soul of the Book, the subject Matter upon which every thing turns, the Cause of the Plague, and the Indication for preventing and curing the Plague, are to be drawn out of it.

Besides, the most ancient and best Physicians knew nothing of Contagion, and far less of Pestilential Contagion; Words only brought in by Physicians in later times, and of Ignorance; and therefore such suspected Words ought to be well described and defined before they are made use of; either in discovering the Nature of abstruse Diseases, or when we are to found Methods of preventing or curing them, upon such Discoveries.

To leave this Enquiry about Contagion to another Occasion, we will only observe, that this necessary Article is overseen and neglected by the Accurate Dr. Mead, for Reasons well known to himself, and easily to be guessed at by every body. It must be acknowledg’d that the Doctor’s way of writing and inquiring is very singular, the remaining part of his Book being carried on without Principles, or any known thing with which his Subject to be explained has any relation.

But, as I have now undertaken to make this short Discourse more intelligible, I will pursue my Design in Dr. Mead’s Method, as far as that does not obscure the Subject: In that Case I will take the Liberty to keep the Thread of our Discourse as much in our view is it is possible. Dr. Mead then having taken leave of Contagion, tells us, that this unknown Contagion is propagated by three Causes, The Air, diseased Persons, and Goods transported from infected Places. What a propagating Cause may be, shall be left to those that deal in Metaphysicks, to determine; it matters not what it appears to be, while the begetting Cause is unknown.

As to Air, he now undertakes to shew us how it becomes Infectious, and how it communicates its noxious Quality to other Bodies. The first, by the Authority of Hippocrates and Galen; but in this he mistakes his Authors, as he commonly does when they do not come up to his Purpose; for Hippocrates is thought, by many Authors, not to treat of the Plague, in this third Book of his Epidemicks; Galen, in the Commentary quoted by Dr. Mead, is so far from thinking that Hippocrates was resolved to give us Cases of the Plague, that he thought quite otherwise: And for the Truth of this Assertion, take an irrefragable Authority, instar omnium, the learned Dr. Friend, who says at the Remark _Λοιμωδης, hic non est proprie pestilens & contagiosus, siquidem in his morbis ab Hippocrate descriptis, nullum est contagii vestigium: Sed ut Galenus innuit aliud non est, quam Επιδημια ὀλέθριος. And a little after, sed ipse titulus Galeno paululum suspectus est_.

We will not insist upon this Sense of Hippocrates; but suppose he there truly treats of the Plague, and that he has observed such a Temperament of Air to have preceded it, what is this to Contagion and Infection, which neither Hippocrates nor Galen ever dream’d of. Besides, Hippocrates calls the Plague a Fever, and in his Opinion several Affections of Air, to him, and us, perhaps, unknown, produced Plagues, or Fevers (for these Words are synonimous with him) and the greatest Part of other Diseases. So that it is manifest from Hippocrates, that this, and many other Alterations of the Air do not make it Infectious.

The following Paragraph is of no Force, after what is now said concerning Hippocrates; the best Historian, that is not a Physician, is never presumed to go beyond an Account and Relation of Matter of Fact, as he apprehends it; and so far went the great Thucydides, in relating the Plague of Athens. We will rather consider what the Doctor alledges for strengthning his Conjecture about Contagion. Stinks of stagnating Waters, in hot Weather; putrid Exhalations from the Earth; and above all, the Corruption of dead Carcasses being unburied, have occasion’d infectious Diseases. Let us now suppose this Account to be true, yet his chief Article about Carcasses is absolutely false, as may be prov’d by one of the best Physicians in any Age; what is all this to Contagion breeding the Plague: For suppose again, some or all of them occasion’d infectious Diseases, the Consequence is not, Ergo, the Plague; there being many contagious Diseases that are neither Plague nor Mortal.

Yet, as if all this were Demonstration, he asserts, That the Plague is produced by a Concurrence of Causes; and their first Effect is a Degree of Stagnation in the Air, which is follow’d by Corruption, and Putrefaction. It is needless to enter upon this Hint of a new Hypothesis; for if his Machine of Contagion, or Infection, be good, these are unnecessary. But alas! the celebrated Doctor has, in the Conclusion, destroy’d the whole Fabrick he had rear’d with so much Trouble, after he had borrow’d Brick from one, Mortar from another, and Timber from a third; and only because he became, against Nature and his own Genius, a Master-Builder. Is a Concurrence of all the supposed Causes necessary to make a Plague? Then there never was a Plague in the World; and that because these Causes never all met together: A hopeful Conclusion! and which at once delivers the World of insufferable Fears, they hitherto groan’d under, by a vulgar Error; which is now contrary to Experience, because it is so to Dr. Mead’s Reasoning.

Hippocrates, on the other Hand, undertakes only to relate the Constitution of the Year when Plagues and Fevers were very frequent; he never thought of making any particular Constitution, or the Weather in it, the Cause of Plagues universally: If he had, Experience should have shewn the contrary, to which he would have submitted. But not to enter into any other Constitutions that might happen in Greece, Experience cries loudly against this Hypothesis of Dr. Mead; since we know that hard and continued frosty Weather produces the Pestilence, most commonly, in our Northern Climates. The Winter 1664, was a continued Frost all through, as Dr. Hodges informs us; yet the Plague broke out in the Christmas time, when it was in its Strength. The Plague in Dantzick, mention’d by Dr. Mead, was in the Winter, when every thing was bound up with a severe Frost; yet so violent was this Plague, that it bred the Dunkirk-Fever in the Fag-end of it, as Dr. Mead learnedly conjectures. So that the Pestilence frequently, and most commonly, happens in a Season very opposite to what the Doctor finds necessary for breeding Infection and Corruption, the Fore-runners of a Plague.

From all this Account it is manifest, that we hitherto know nothing of Contagion, nor of any Corruption convey’d into Air, which it is to foment and cherish, to beget or propagate the Pestilence; as also that this Notion of Contagion taken up and espoused by later Physicians, is very ill supported by them, and still worse by Dr. Mead, who is little acquainted with their Opinions, so common and obvious in Books of Physick. And therefore as he has been very unhappy in discovering the Change in Air that makes it infectious; we will try for better Success, in his discovering the Means, whereby it communicates its noxious Quality to other Bodies.

In order to pursue this Discourse with greater Exactness, it is necessary to ease our Memory from carrying the different Particulars of seven Pages, and not to oblige the Reader to take, on trust, what is writ so long before. It may, perhaps, be useful to Dr. Mead to tell us, that he, lately, left the Air in a putrid State; but that is nothing to us, who are at this present time sensible that the Doctor has not been able to bring the least Speck of Putrefaction into it. However, not to balk him in his projected Means, whereby it communicates its noxious Quality; he desires us to observe, that Putrefaction is a kind of Fermentation, and that all Bodies in a Ferment emit a volatile active Spirit, of Power to agitate, and put into intestine Motions, that is, to change the Nature of other Fluids, into which it insinuates it self. Now we have observed it, we find every Article of this Observation to be false; for Putrefaction does not always precede Fermentation, nor that every body in a Ferment emits volatile Spirits, nor that volatile Spirits have a Power to agitate, or to put into intestine Motions all Liquors into which they insinuate themselves; and still far less, that being put into intestine Motions, is to change the Nature of the Fluid thus put in Motion. What Use the Doctor may have for this Roll of precarious Assertions, time may tell us: for he has now got the Master-Key of all Philosophy, even Fermentation, into his Hand. By Fermentation Stones, Metals, Plants, Animals, and (if it pleases him) the Pestilence, are generated, and cherished. This makes Diseases; this cures them; by this we live, by this we die.

Neither does this Machine only answer all our Wants in performing the greater, but even the smaller feats, as we chance to employ it: for if we are asked, why Glow-birds shine in the Night? or why wet Hay takes Fire of it self, &c. one short Answer is sufficient to all these, that these great Works are done by Fermentation. A Poet in ancient times, pronounced those Nations happy, that had their rural Gods growing in their Gardens. But I esteem the Man far more happy, who has at hand so ready an Answer to every thing: who has got a Machine equally serviceable on every occasion, the Philosopher’s Stone, the universal Medicine, the making a Plague.