Note 19 — HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

The Plague of London was supposed to have arisen from such a cause, as we learn from the writers of that period. I shall quote a passage from a pamphlet by W. Kemp, M. A. dedicated to Charles the Second. ‘One cause of breeding the pestilence is that corruption of the air, which is occasioned by the influence of the Stars, by the aspects, conjunctions, and oppositions of the Planets, by the eclipses of the Sun and Moon, and by the consequences of Comets.’ ‘Astra regunt homines, sed regit astra Deus.’ Hippocrates advises his son Thessalus to study numbers and geometry, (‘Epist. ad Thessalum.’) because, says he, the rising and setting of the Stars have a great effect upon Distempers. Citois, the historian of the celebrated Colic of Poitou (Colica Pictonum), which raged with such epidemic fury in that province during the Sixteenth century, drops a hint, apparently with a view to account for the origin of the disease, viz. that to the great astonishment of Astrologers, ‘a new Star had, in the same year made its appearance in the constellation of Cassiopeia’.—(Diatriba de novo et populari, apud Pictones, dolore colico bilioso.)