Among the many diseases which afflict the human race, we find ONE, upon record, so irresistible in its progress, so fatal in its attacks, and so entirely beyond the powers of medicine; that, like the serpent _Python_, the _Leviathan_, or the _Mammoth_, among animals, it has generally been distinguished by names expressive of its destroying nature; not, like other diseases, by any particular appellation derived from its symptoms. In the Hebrew language this distemper is expressed by the word which signifies _perdition_;[1] in Greek it is called _loimos_, from _luo_, to destroy; in Latin, _pestis_, from _pessundo_, to overthrow; and in English, the _plague_, from the Latin _plaga_, a stroke with a whip; alluding to the common opinion, that it is a scourge from heaven, taking vengeance on mankind for their sins. [1] Thus Dr. Hodges; but Calmet informs us, that the Hebrews call by the name of plagues all diseases sent by way of punishment or correction from God; as the pestilence, infection, the leprosy, sudden deaths, famines, tempests: in a word, all calamities, whether public or private. _Calmet’s Dict._ vol. ii. fol. 412. _Plaga._ Parkhurst derives the Greek term _loimos_, either from _luo_, as above, or from another Greek word signifying _to faint_; the same from which the English word _eclipse_ has its origin; or it may be from the Hebrew _lehem_, to consume. A friend observes, that “we no where find the word _perdition_ in our version of the Old Testament. We have, however, the word _destruction_, which is of a similar import; as, for instance, in Prov. xv. 11. where the Hebrew is _abdun_. In Rev. xvii. 8 & 11, we find the English word _perdition_; but as we have no Hebrew version of the New Testament, we may advert to the ancient Syriac version. The Syriac being a sister dialect of the Hebrew, differs, radically, but little from it. The Syriac of the two places referred to above is _abdna_; hence the word _abaddon_, whole root is _abd_, and is the same with that of the Hebrew word above. “As to the word _plague_, we often find it in the Old Testament, but perhaps never in that specific sense in which the moderns use it. The original word, rendered plague, is pretty generally _ngp_, or its derivations; as Exod. xii. 13., ii. Sam. xxiv. 21, &c.” On this last occasion, however, as the word _pestilence_ had been used before, in the same chapter, we can scarce doubt its having been really some kind of disease: and we know that modern plagues will sometimes destroy as quickly as this is said to have done.