If in the form of an address to the physicians of Germany, I express the wish to see such a melancholy state of things remedied, the nature of the subject requires that, with the exception of the still prevailing Cholera, remarkable universal epidemics should be selected for investigation. They form the grand epochs, according to which those epidemics which are less extensive, but not, on that account, less worthy of observation, naturally range themselves. Far be it from me to recommend any fixed series, or even the plan and method to be pursued in treating the subject. It would, perhaps, be, on the whole, most advantageous, if my honoured Colleagues, who attend to this request, were to commence with those epidemics for which they possess complete materials, and that entirely according to their own plan, without adopting any model for imitation, for in this manner simple historical truth will be best elicited. Should it, however, be found impracticable to furnish historical descriptions of entire epidemics, a task often attended with difficulties, interesting fragments of all kinds, for which there are rich treasures in MSS. and scarce works in various places, would be no less welcome and useful towards the great object of preparing a collective history of epidemics. Up to the present moment, it might almost seem that the most essential preliminaries are wanting for the accomplishment of such an undertaking. The study of medical history is everywhere at a low ebb;—in France and England scarcely a trace remains, to the most serious detriment of the whole domain of medicine; in Germany too, there are but few who suspect what inexhaustible stores of instructive truth are lying dormant within their power; they may, perhaps, class them among theoretical doctrines, and commend the laborious investigation of them without being willing to recognise their spirit. None of the Universities of Germany, whose business it ought to be to provide, in this respect, for the prosperity of the inheritance committed to their charge, can boast a Professor’s chair for the History of Medicine; nay, in many, it is so entirely unknown, that it is not even regarded as an object of secondary importance, so that it is to be apprehended that the fame of German erudition, may, at least in medicine, gradually vanish, and our medical knowledge become, as practical indeed, but at the same time as assuming, as mechanical, and as defective, as that of France and England. Even those noble institutions, the Academies, in which the spirit of the eighteenth century still lingers, and whose more peculiar province it is to explore the rich pages of science, have not entered upon the history of Epidemics, and by their silence have encouraged the unfounded and injurious supposition, that this field is desolate and unfruitful.