2io Epidemics. 



745 years, or close upon 743 years, the time which is here 

 fixed as the commencement of the 640 years serial changes 

 or metamorphosis in the epidemic order of manifestation, or 

 modifying the type of diseases. 



The period of blending, and of pestilences attaining their 

 highest destructive powers, appears to be after the com- 

 pletion of the first 200 years, and before the last 150 years 

 are reached, of which the Black death and Athenian 

 plague are illustrations ; but the first outbreak appears to 

 be usually not quite so widely spread, but, within the area 

 it reaches, quite as destructive as at any future time of its 

 continuance. 



Having made these few preliminary remarks, it is a matter 

 of much interest to observe that from 750 years B.C., on to 

 the coming of Christ, save in the earlier periods, where we 

 take the Bible as our guide, we are coming in contact, for 

 the first time, with tolerably reliable data from which to 

 measure the march of nations, and the erratic forms in 

 which science and civilization spread their not very huma- 

 nizing mantle over the inhabitants of the earth. 



Nineveh, Babylon, Egypt, and Persia were either at their 

 zenith, or else close upon decadence, at the beginning 

 of this period; and Greece both rose to, and fell from, the 

 height of her greatness, and Rome, as a republic, attained 

 to the height of her power during this period. 



It is worthy of remark, therefore, that from 750 B.C. on to 

 60 B.C. we find no record of leprosy anywhere, but Manetho, 

 who was a priest, or Egyptian magus, or something akin, 

 writing in the fourth century before Christ to Greeks, 

 in his attempt to calumniate the Jews as having brought 

 leprosy to Egypt, and left it a nation of lepers, gives us the 

 only proof we have that, during this period Egypt was the 

 great hot-bed of leprosy, in whose territory was always to 

 be found the elephantiasis of the Greeks. 



