Nor would it disgrace our feelings, if, in expiation of the abuse and obloquy not long since so lavishly bestowed by the public on the medical profession, we should entertain some slight sense of gratitude towards those members of the community, who were engaged, at the risk of their lives and the sacrifice of their personal interests, in endeavouring to arrest the progress of the evil, and to mitigate the sufferings of their fellow men. I have added, at the close of the Appendix, some extracts from a scarce little work in black letter, called “A Boke or Counseill against the Disease commonly called the Sweate or Sweatyng Sicknesse,” published by Caius in 1552. This was written three years before his Latin treatise on the same subject, and is so quaint, and, at the same time, so illustrative of the opinions of his day, and even of those of the fourteenth century, on the causes of universal diseases, that the passages which I have quoted will not fail to afford some amusement as well as instruction. If I have been tempted to reprint more of this curious production than was necessary to my primary object, it has been from a belief that it would be generally acceptable to the reader to gather some particulars regarding the mode of living in the sixteenth century, and to observe the author’s animadversions on the degeneracy and credulity of the age in which he lived. His advice on the choice of a medical attendant cannot be too strongly recommended, at least _by a physician_; and his warning against quackery, particularly the quackery of _painters_, who “scorne (_quære_ score?) you behind your backs with their medicines, so filthy that I am ashamed to name them,” seems quite prophetic. In conclusion, I beg to acknowledge the obligation which I owe to my friend Mr. H. E. Lloyd, whose intimate acquaintance with the German language and literature will, I hope, be received as a sufficient pledge that no very important errors remain in a translation which he has kindly revised. London, 1833. PREFACE. We here find an important page of the history of the world laid open to our view. It treats of a convulsion of the human race, unequalled in violence and extent. It speaks of incredible disasters, of despair and unbridled demoniacal passions. It shews us the abyss of general licentiousness, in consequence of an universal pestilence, which extended from China to Iceland and Greenland.