NATURE AND CAUSES OF EPIDEMIC PESTILENCES.
We have abundant reason for the belief that nothing is fortuitous; but,
on the contrary, that everything in this world of ours is the effect
of design; all things around us bearing evident stamp of the skill and
beneficence of its Omnipotent Author.
“Thus at thy potent nod, EFFECT and CAUSE
Walk hand in hand accordant to thy Laws;
Rise at Volition’s call; in groups combined,
Amuse, delight, instruct, and serve mankind.”
The histories of epidemic pestilences or diseases--because of the vast
numbers of persons on whom they seize at one and the same time, and
also because of their intensity and destructiveness,--are not only of
greater importance to mankind than are the generality of maladies,
but they are also of deep interest in as far as concerns questions of
pathology. Epidemics are also exceedingly interesting in a physical and
moral point of view,--their histories, and the investigation of their
causes, leading to an insight into the organism of the world, in which
the sum of organic life is subjected to the greater powers of nature;
for it would appear, as far as human knowledge extends, that all
organized bodies, from a variety of causes as dissimilar as they are
complicated and numerous, are more or less susceptible of change and
decay. Thus we see disease assail and carry off mankind at all times
and in all regions: murrain is destructive of dumb animals, while
blight spares not the vegetable kingdom, from the sturdiest oak to the
most diminutive herbage; in fine, all nature is subjected, in various
degrees, to the devastating tendency of the elements in their general
evolutions in the mundane economy, based on immutable laws, arising
from original and supreme provision:
“Wonder-working hand,
---- in majestic silence sways at will
The mighty movements of unbounded nature.”
Considering that epidemic pestilences or diseases have been from time
immemorial more destructive of mankind than all other maladies, or than
even famine and the sword combined, it is somewhat surprising that a
comprehensive and efficient investigation of such an important class of
diseases, founded on enlarged and scientific views, has never yet been
made,--in fact, has scarcely ever been attempted. Such apathy to minute
enquiry into the nature and causes of epidemics, and the indifference
evinced to every-day occurrences, so much attended to by the ancients,
is culpable in the extreme; for nothing can be more injurious to the
cause of truth, or tend more to retard scientific pursuits, than
such disregard of the nature of things, for daily experience alone
is sufficient to show that every effect in the physical world has
an antecedent cause, which is at all times open to experiment and
investigation, and which, however obscure at first, may often be
explained and understood by means of close observation and steady
perseverance in our researches.
Epidemics are acute diseases which run through their stages with
rapidity, consequently making it absolutely necessary that we should be
prepared not only to relieve those attacked with promptitude, but, if
possible, to prevent others being affected, which can only be done by
attending to the results of an unprejudiced investigation concerning
all that is known of the laws by which they are governed--the causes
whence they arise, and their mode of extension.
To the ancients, who were accurate observers of nature and of nature’s
laws, we are indebted for much valuable information as regards the
universal distempers termed Epidemic Pestilences,[2] and although
amongst their writings we may not at first sight recognize many
diseases according to our modern nomenclature, nevertheless by careful
perusal and investigation we shall be enabled to identify some of them
sufficiently to show the wisdom and the superiority of the arrangements
of our predecessors, when compared with the confusion and worse than
uselessness of many of the nosological distinctions and classifications
made since the days of Hippocrates, tending, as they do, not only to
divert us from the true character of disease, but also to mislead us in
our practical views.
The records of antiquity show that all kinds of pestilences, including
febrile diseases, have been known under various appellations from
the earliest ages of the world. From the beginning of the Jewish
nation,--from the first settlement of the Israelites in unhealthy Egypt
to the present day, we find noticed a series of plagues or pestilences
overspreading the various parts of the habitable globe, and destroying
millions of the human species; and if we refer to the histories of
ancient nations, as well as to the modern annals of medicine, we shall
find therein recorded the same character of diseases, arising from
like causes, occurring during similar seasons, happening in similar
localities, and marked pretty generally by the same circumstances.
The assumption, therefore, of the existence of any new disease, as
propounded by some modern authorities, would represent the Divine Power
as dispensing with the laws of nature,--in short, would imply nothing
less than the suspension or alteration of the operation of those laws
which the Almighty in his wisdom imposed on nature at the creation;
“By whose almighty word
They all from nothing came;
And all shall last
From changes free;
His firm decree
Stands ever fast;”--
--laws which the pious Psalmist of Israel in his contemplations on the
divine goodness and greatness of Jehovah, as displayed in the kingdom
of Nature, describes as the admirable chain of natural causes and
effects formed and preserved by him in this lower world:--whatsoever
the Lord pleaseth, He doeth in heaven and in the earth, in the sea,
and in all deep places. He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends
of the earth, He maketh the lightnings for the rains, He bringeth the
wind out of his treasure, He smote the first-born of Egypt from man to
beast, He covereth the heaven with clouds, He prepareth the rain for
the earth, &c.--The supposition of the existence of any new disease
in our day is consequently untenable, but to be accounted for because
of our inability to trace diseases under the same names and precise
characteristic symptoms described by our predecessors in the study of
nature; in fact, the comparatively modern origin of some diseases may
be said to rest on the absence or deficiency of distinct and express
notice of them in the writings of the ancients, arising in some measure
from false or imperfect translations from the original, and from the
practice of the ancients in referring different malignant maladies to
the same pestilential constitution; for be it remembered that they
considered all febrile diseases bore such affinity to each other, that
they classed all pestilential epidemic distempers under one general
head or term, viz., PESTILENCE, PLAGUE, or FEVER; under the head
of consumption, they noted all chronic diseases; and boils, scabs,
pustules, blotches, carbuncles, &c., were included under that of skin
diseases.
Further, with reference to modern nomenclature, we now hear pestilence
called plague in Egypt, yellow fever in America and elsewhere, bilious
remittent and intermittent, and also yellow fever in the West Indies,
and typhus or nervous fever in Great Britain: we read also of the same
epidemics which the ancients called pimples, pustules, apostemes, and
gangrenous sores, now being called distinct and confluent small-pox,
carbuncles, &c.: and I repeat that the perusal of ancient writings,
both sacred and profane, not only affords us ample evidence of the
origin, nature, causes, progress, and violence of such maladies
in the primitive ages of the world, but they also demonstrate the
identity of ancient pestilence and modern plague,--the resemblance
of ancient and modern fevers,--the similitude of burning boils and
modern carbuncle,--the like appearance of pustules and small-pox,--all
tending to prove that no _material_ alteration in the nature of
any diseases, or of their causes, has taken place since the first
population of the world; AND, ABOVE ALL, THAT THEY DISPLAY THE
PERPETUAL UNIFORMITY OF PROVIDENCE IN THE ENTIRE OPERATIONS OF NATURE’S
WORKS.