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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
state_n	account_n	grand_a	great_a	46	3	2.0781	3	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28961	An essay of the great effects of even languid and unheeded motion whereunto is annexed An experimental discourse of some little observed causes of the insalubrity and salubrity of the air and its effects / by the Honourable Robert Boyle ...	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.	1685 (1685)	Wing B3949; ESTC R36503	94,124	315

malignity of the Plague yet I doubt they are not sufficient for so wonderfull an effect unless we take in some new Exhalations that then impregnate and correct the Air. And we shall scarce doubt of the great interest these have in the effect produc'd if we give credit to what the recentest Writer I have met with of Voyages into Egypt has lately publish'd about the annual Pestilence at Grand Cairo a City he much frequented This Authour in the account he gives of the present state of Egypt relates that a little after the middle of our June and usually upon the very seventeenth day there begin to fall towards the last quarter of the night near the morning certain drops of a kind of Dew which causes the River to be fruitfull and purifies the Air from all the Infection of Camsims by which I presume he means the Pestilence for after some lines interpos'd he subjoins The Drops or Dew purifies the Air for as soon as it falls the Plague ceases to be mortal none dies of it the Air is wholesome all Distempers cease and if any person grows sick he never dies And then he adds This Dew gives life to every thing and when it falls upon the Wheat it causeth it to continue many years without corruption or Worms and is far more nourishing than that Corn on which it never falls For this cause they never house the Corn of the Grand Seignior in the Barns till this Dew is fallen upon it that it might keep the longer without Worms As well this Conjecture as some other things deliver'd here and there in this Paper about the Salubrity of the Air may probably gain the more credit if I here subjoin what I learn'd by inquiry from a very ingenious Gentleman who was owner of one or more of the Mines that afford the Phaenomenon I am to mention Which is this That in the Tin-mine Countreys in Devonshire it sometimes happens as perhaps I may have elsewhere noted to another purpose that upon a sudden a Spot of ground and that not always narrow will be as 't were blasted by the ascending hurtfull Fumes insomuch that not onely the Grass Fern and other more tender Vegetables will be turned black and as it were burnt or scorched up but now and then Trees also without excepting Oaks themselves will be blasted and spoil'd by the powerfull Operation of these subtil and poisonous Effluvia It will probably be here expected that among the Epidemical Diseases that our Hypothesis derives from Subterraneal Effluvia I should particularly treat of the cause of Pestilential Fevers and the Plague it self But though some such Fevers may not improbably be in great part imputed to the noxious Expirations of the Globe we inhabit yet as to the true Plague it self I freely confess I am at a loss about it's Origine The sacred Writings expresly teach that some Plagues and particularly that which in David's time swept away in three days 70000 Persons have been in an extraordinary manner inflicted by God And to me it appears either scarce possible or far more difficult than those that have not attentively enough considered the matter are wont to think it To deduce the abstruce Origine strange Symtomes and other odd Phaenomena of some Plagues that are recorded in History from merely Corporeal Causes On the other side it seems unphilosophical and perhaps rather seems than is very pious to recur without an absolute necessity to Supernatural Causes for such Effects as do not manifestly exceed the power of Natural ones though the particular manner of their being produc'd is perchance more than we are yet able clearly to explicate And I think it the more questionable whether all Plagues are Supernatural Exertions of God's Power and Wrath against the Wicked because I observe that Brutes which are as well uncapable of moral Vice as moral Vertue are yet oftentimes subject to Murrains such as may without incongruity be lookt upon as the Pestilences of Beasts And 't is the less likely that these sweeping and contagious Maladies should be always sent for the punishment of impious men because I remember to have read in good Authours that as some Plagues destroy'd both Men and Beasts so some other did peculiarly destroy Brute Animals of very little consideration or use to Men as Cats c. Upon these and the like Reasons I have sometimes suspected that in the Controversie about the Origine of the Plague namely Whether it be Natural or Supernatural neither of the contending Parties is altogether in the right since 't is very possible that some Pestilences may not break forth without an extraordinary though perhaps not Immediate interposition of Almighty God provok'd by the Sins of Men and yet other Plagues may be produc'd by a Tragical concourse of merely Natural Causes But though the difficulties that incumber each of the opposite Opinions keep me both from Dogmatically asserting that All Plagues have a Supernatural Origine and from denying that Any have it yet to say something on such an occasion though I can speak but very hesitantly I shall venture to add that whether or no the true Plague be said to descend to the Earth from a higher Sphere than that of Nature yet its Propagation and Effects are at least for the most part carry'd on mainly by a malignant disposition in the Air without which some Plagues could never have been so catching as they were nor so suddenly mortal and that in divers Pestilences this malignant Disposition in the Air may probably be in great part imputed to some kinds of Subterraneal Expirations I am prone to think and that chiefly upon two Accounts The first thing that induces me to this Conjecture is that not any of the several Causes to which the Plague is wont to be imputed seems to me to be sufficient Those that fetch it from the malevolent aspects and influence of the Celestial lights besides that they suppose some things very difficult to be prov'd have recourse to Agents too remote too general and too indeterminate to be acquiesc'd in as the Causes of such particular Symtomes and Phaenomena as oftentimes accompany Pestilences And as for those other Sects of Physicians that confidently derive the Plague some from Internal Putrefaction and others from excessive Heats noisome Stinks Corrupt aliments and such other Celebrated Causes though each party alledges plausible Reasons for its own opinion yet their objections against their adversaries are much stronger than their arguments are for themselves And the Learned Diemer-broeck though his own Hypothesis seem to be more Theological than Philosophical has much enervated the Arguments brought for the several opinions lately nam'd and by him dissented from The Reasons he employs to refute all the receiv'd opinions about the Origine of the Plague except his own are divers of them worthy of so learned a man to whom though I had leisure to transcribe them I should refer the Curious my present design being onely