--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. CHAPTER X. OF THE CAUSES OF EPIDEMIC PESTILENCES.