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;”--