284 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book VL 



ber of them, and who, if the mortality among children had been fo 

 very great as it is among us, would certainly have mentioned it, as a 

 faa moft remarkable. One reafon, among feveral that might be 

 o-iven, why the Confumption is fo fatal a difeafe in Britain, is the ufe 

 we make of coal for fewel, which poifons the air with its iulphureous 

 vapours. There was an ad paffed, as I have been told, in England, 

 foon after coal came to be ufed there for fewel, which was in the 

 13th century, prohibiting the ufe of it : And, as late as the days of 

 Queen Elizabeth, there was an ad of her council forbidding any 

 more than one fire of coal to be ufed in one houfe in London. The 

 fmoke of coal, which arifes from a great town, obfcures and thickens 

 the air fo much, that when you fee it at a diftance, you would 

 think that no animal could breathe in it. In Italy, where they ufe no 

 other fewel but wood, the Confumption, as 1 am informed, is a dif- 

 eafe fo little known, that when a Britilh man comes thither to die 

 of it, which very often happens, they think it is a plague, and burn 

 his cloaths and even the bed he lay upon, to prevent the infedion 

 being communicated. 



There is another difeafe very fatal in England, though not fo fa- 

 tal as the confumption : It is the fmall-pox, of which I was told by 

 a very eminent phyfician in London, that as many die now as be- 

 fore inoculation and the cool regimen were pradifed : And by the 

 laft bill of mortality of London, which I looked to, it appears, that 

 about one fixth of all the deaths was by the fmall pox. Nor, in- 

 deed, fhould 1 be furprifed, if it was afcertained, that more died 

 now of the fmall-pox than before inoculation was in ufe : For by 

 inoculation, the difeafe is certainly more propagated, and made 

 more common than it was formerly ; and our conftitutions, I am 

 afraid, are now fo much weaker as not to be able to fupport, as 

 formerly, any difeafe, even in the moft favourable circumftances. 



There 



