560 Medicine. [Chap. IV, 



Pestilential diseases are supposed to have greatly 

 abated in frequency and malignity in the course of 

 the eighteenth century. Tiiis observation, how- 

 ever, must be understood to be chiefly restricted 

 to those parts of the world which, during that 

 period, have been making progress in civilisation, 

 intelligence, and refinement. In many parts of 

 Asia and Africa, and in European Turkey, it is 

 probable that little abatement of the ravages of 

 such diseases has actually taken place. The de- 

 graded state of man in most of the Mohammedan 

 countries; the poverty, filth, and wretchedness, 

 which oppress the lower classes of people in their 

 crowded cities, and the inattention to cleanliness 

 and ventilation, even in the houses of the most 

 opulent, aided by the influence of their doctrine of 

 fatalism, seem to leave them little prospect of 

 emerging from their present condition into one 

 more respectable, and exempt from malignant dis- 

 eases. The contrast of health and disease, in the 

 Christian and Mohammedan world, while it aflbrds 

 to the pious mind a satisfactory confirmation of 

 his faith, furnishes also to the philosopher and phy- 

 sician an instructive lesson, with regard to the com- 

 parative influence of the respective principles and 

 institutions of Christianity and Mohammedanism. 



the vessels under his command. Captain Cook, thirty years 

 alter Anson, with a company of one hundred and eighteen men, 

 performed a voyage of tliree years and eighteen days, tliroughout 

 all die climates, from 52 deg. north, to 72 deg. south, witli the 

 loss of only one man, who had been previously indisposed. — See 

 Dr. Ramsay's learned and interesting Revieio of the Improvements^ 

 Proj^n-exs, and Slate of Medicine in, the Eightcciuh Century, &c. 

 pp. 29 and 30. 



