TO come nearer therefore to our Business; the same Affections that in an hot Country heat the Blood and other Juices, so as in a great Measure to put them into Fusion, when translated into the contrary Extream may give contrary Properties to the same Fluids, and _è contra_; and this might be demonstrated by innumerable Experiments, were there any Doubt about it. IT being then granted, that this Plague first was brought from _Africa_, or _Asia_, to _Holland_, and from thence into _Britain_, every one may easily conjecture, how much Alteration it must undergo in such a Travel, from a hot and dry Climate into a moist and cold one, not so much in its own Nature, as from the Vehicle of Air which conveyed it, and thereby producing different Degrees of Infection, and Series of Symptoms: But this Variation would be most discernable in the Complication of the pestilential _Seminium_, with the particular Diseases of each Country, and those which are as it were peculiar to them: This in our Case is very well worth Notice, for in _Holland_, where the Scurvy extreamly reigns, and therefore, for Reasons before given, most liable to a pestilential Infection, it obtained only as a more aggravated Scurvy, as shall hereafter be further remarked. AS for that Opinion of the famous _Kircher_, about animated Worms, I must confess I never could come at any such Discovery with the Help of the best Glasses, nor ever found the same discovered by any other; but perhaps in our cloudy Island we are not so sharp-sighted as in the serene Air of _Italy_; and with Submission to so great a Name, it seems to me very disconsonant to Reason, that such a pestilential _Seminium_, which is both of a nitrous and poisonous Nature, should produce a living Creature. AS in putrid Fevers, so in a Pestilence, Malignity is a Destroyer of Insects, and frightens them away as it were alive, so far is it from giving Birth to them; indeed in some malignant Ulcers and Cancers, and in the Blood of some People, sometimes _animalcula_ are found; which is rather to be looked upon as the Effect of some Fault in the nutritious Juice, than the Produce of any Poison; and therefore they are not to be accounted amongst the Causes of a Pestilence. [Illustration] SECTION III. _Of the primary Seat of a Pestilence; where, by the Way, is considered the Nature of the Spirits, and their Infection in an humane Body from Poison._