Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) _Doctor MEAD_’s Short DISCOURSE EXPLAIN’D. BEING A _Clearer_ ACCOUNT OF Pestilential Contagion, AND _PREVENTING_. _Nec satis est dixisse, ego mira poemata pango._ [Illustration] _LONDON_: _Printed, and Sold by _W. BOREHAM_, at the Angel in _Pater-noster Row_._ 1721. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] Dr. _MEAD’s_ Short Discourse EXPLAIN’D. Many and various are the Opinions about the Design, as well as about the Meaning and real and true Sense of the short Discourse lately writ by the Celebrated Dr. _Mead_, for preventing the Plague. The various Turns of the Heads of different Men, their different Capacities, and the Sublimity of the Doctor’s Style may, no doubt, occasion all this Variety in understanding Him and his Book. Some, and if we may judge by the great Run and Demand for his Book, the greatest Number of the People of all Ranks expected some _Esculapian_, but easy Rules, whereby they might govern and conduct their Life against so silent an Enemy as the Pestilence, which walketh in Darkness. This seems to be more than a _Conjecture_, because this great Demand ceas’d of a sudden, as the Plague it self commonly does, after they found the Physician had no hand in it, or that his Rules were locked up for the Favourites of his Faculty. And as the People commonly make the best Judgment of Things after a little Experience, so we find this Judgment of the Town confirmed, by what his _Friends_, _Adepts_, and other _Officers_, who only understand or declare what Dr. _Mead_ would have believed; and accordingly they labour to declare, that the genuine Meaning and Design of the Celebrated Doctor was, to give a Politick Account, how the Plague may be staved off by Force of Arms.