As the
illustrious Hecker says, in the history of every epidemic, from
the earliest times, the spirit of inquiry was always aroused to
learn the machinery of such stupendous engines of destruction;
and even in the earliest times there was neither deficiency in
courage nor in zeal for investigation. "When the glandular plague
first made its appearance as a universal epidemic, whilst the
more pusillanimous, haunted by visionary fears, shut themselves
up in their closets, some physicians at Constantinople,
astonished at the phenomena opened the boils of the deceased. The
like has occurred both in ancient and modern times, not without
favorable results for Science; nay, more mature views excited an
eager desire to become acquainted with similar or still greater
visitations among the ancients, but, as later ages have always
been fond of referring to Grecian antiquity, the learned of those
times, from a partial and meagre predilection, were contented
with the descriptions of Thucydides, even where nature had
revealed, in infinite diversity, the workings of her powers."
There cannot but be a natural interest in every medical mind
to-day in the few descriptions given of the awful ravages of the
epidemics which, fortunately, in our enlightened sanitary era,
have entirely disappeared.
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