260 Epidemics. 



2,000 to 2,100 A.D. the generations then living on this earth 

 will witness important changes in disease and its manage- 

 ment, and probably in the spread and onward development 

 of greater and wider nationalities, and less frivolous patriotic 

 affectations than the world has ever yet seen. 



Moreover, it is to be hoped that that vile and base demon, 

 under the name of Patriot and semi-religion, who, in a nation's 

 prosperity, will hurl it into fierce war not to raise a trampled 

 nation from its grave of social and political life, but to hurry 

 into extravagance, debt, and frequently well-merited degrada- 

 tion will be swept from the threshold of every home and 

 every pettifogging principality and corner of the earth ; and, 

 in the place of a money-seeking or vain patriot, men will 

 arise that will study and diligently apply themselves to band 

 nations into families, and the labour of nations into the 

 individual wealth of each member of the family community. 



Before concluding these very imperfect reflections upon 

 epidemics generally, and especially upon what may be called 

 epochal epidemics, a few remarks will be made upon the 

 rise and fall of nations in relation to epochal epidemics. 



The scholar, the anthropologist, and ethnologist, must not 

 look for any servile submission to the dicta of any particular 

 school, or to the plan of detail as being fashioned upon this 

 or that author's model of unfolding history or explaining its 

 course and end. What is here written is for a defined 

 object, and the generalizations given are those respecting 

 which all can agree or differ without having their own 

 special theories much disturbed this way or that. 



Taking Acre, on the coast of Palestine, as a centre ; from 

 2340 to 1200 B.C., civilization arose and spread to the west 

 of Acre ; Egypt, with Thebes or No and Memphis, was 

 then the centre of civilization. When Egypt arose to a 

 nation which absorbed commerce and science more perfectly 

 than surrounding habitable portions of the earth is not 



