VOL. XIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. Q7 



Again I have observed, which I offer as an argument of the little injury in- 

 tense cold does to the nature of animals, I say, I have seen both hexapode 

 worms (which I compare to the tender embryos of sanguineous animals, because 

 such are in a middle state) and flies of divers sorts hard frozen in the winter, 

 and I have taken them up from the snow, and if I cast them against the glass, 

 they would endanger the breaking of it, and make it ring like so much hard 

 ice; yet when I put the insects under the glass, and set them before the fire, 

 they would after a short time nimbly creep about, and be gone, if the glass 

 which I whelmed upon them had not secured them. 



It has indeed been noted by a very wise philosopher, in contradiction to our 

 English proverb, which says, that a green Christmas makes a fat church-yard;* 

 that the last plague broke out here at London after a long and severe winter 

 1665. But I reply, that that was accidental only, for that disease is never bred 

 among us, but comes to us by trade and infection. It is properly a disease of 

 Asia, where it is epidemical. And therefore by the providence of God we are 

 very secure from any such calamities as the natural efl^ect of our climate. 



And for the same reason, I judge the small pox, so. much raging at present, 

 not to be from the season or temperature of the year, but from infection 

 wholly; that also being an exotic disease of the oriental people, and not known 

 to Europe, or even Asia Minor, or Africa at all, till a spice trade was opened 

 with the later princes of Egypt, to the remotest parts of the East Indies, 

 whence-^ it originally came, and where it rages more cruelly at this day than 

 with us. 



The like I think of the griping of the guts (dysentery) that it is a peculiar 

 disease of the West Indies, and yearly received from thence, for this reason, 

 that it is none of the tormina ventris of the ancients, and therefore called by a 

 new name by such as have written of it, and also because it is yet scarcely 

 known in any part of the north of England, or the midland counties. :{: So 

 that we are not to judge or prognosticate of the salubrity or sickliness of a year 

 from foreign diseases, but by the raging of such as are natural to the people of 

 our climate. 



* It has been shown by Dr. Wm. Heberden (Phil. Trans, for 1796) that contrary to popular opi- 

 nion, the mortality in London is greater in severe than in mild winters. 



+ From other accounts it would seem more probable that the small pox is of Abyssinian origin. 



J Dysentery is so frequent in the southern parts of England, especially during the autumnal sea- 

 son, that it cannot be properly numbered among exotic or imported diseases. The same exciting 

 causes which give rise to this 4isorder in the West Indies, produce it here; but in this climate these 

 causes operate in a weaker degree, hence the complaint is neither so general nor so violent as in the 

 tropical regions. 



VOL. III. O 



