UPON the strong, presumptive Proofs therefore that the pestilential Poison chiefly resides in the Spirits, we cannot but much admire at the Weakness of those, who expect to detect its Nature and Cause from what they can find on the Dissection of morbid Bodies, and such like Circumstances: For a very noted Person, and one of exquisite Skill in Anatomy, although he himself at last fell in the general Calamity, affirmed, that the Seat of the last Pestilence was in the extream Angles of the _Plexus Choroides_, towards the _Cerebellum_, because he had found a small Vesicle there; others have observed the Lungs to have been marked with the Tokens of Infection; others report the Heart to have been tumefied, and burnt as it were, to a Coal; whereas it is plain, that these Parts are only so many Fields of Battle, where the Spirits and the Infection contend it with each other; Nor will any one, who rightly considers these Things, wonder, that such Marks of Devastation should every where be left by so cruel an Enemy. THEREFORE, although it should be granted that the most obvious and open Tokens of a Pestilence are from a spiritual and an invisible Cause, and whose Effects may perhaps sometimes be laid open to Sight, yet I have no Intention to discourage anatomical Dissections as a needless Trouble, for by such Light, Medicine is recovered from the Reproach of Conjecture; but when Bodies are opened which have been destroyed by such subtile Agents as here spoke of, there is no Confidence to be given from thence to the Nature of the Disease; and those who have been most knowing in the Nature, Use, and Disorders of the Spirits, very well can direct how to recover those Disorders, and avoid future Inconveniencies by immediate Application thereunto. AND Lastly, to conclude this Doctrine concerning the Spirits Infection, this irrefragable Argument may be produced from the Intention of Cure; for I have experienced by more than a thousand Instances, that the more cardiack and alexipharmick Medicines are subtile and spirituous, the more certainly do they encounter the pestilential Poison with Success; whereas, on the contrary, those Medicines which are coarser and slower of Exertion, do little or no Good. But this we refer to the curative Part hereafter in another Section. SECTION IV. _Of the Complication of a Pestilence with other Distempers, and particularly with the Scurvy._ AS the Pestilence is the most powerful of all other Distempers, so it also claims a particular Privilege of joining with all others; so that it does not more excel in its own Contrariety and Antipathy to Nature, than it asserts a Prerogative over all those various Evils which the humane Frame is subjected to, and draws them into its Assistance in exercising its cruel Power over Mankind.