This image is the cover for the book A Treatise on the Plague and Yellow Fever, Classics To Go

A Treatise on the Plague and Yellow Fever, Classics To Go

Excerpt: "Among the many diseases which afflict the human race, we find one, upon record, so irresistible in its progress, so fatal in its attacks, and so entirely beyond the powers of medicine; that, like the serpent Python, the Leviathan, or the Mammoth, among animals, it has generally been distinguished by names expressive of its destroying nature; not, like other diseases, by any particular appellation derived from its symptoms. In the Hebrew language this distemper is expressed by the word which signifies perdition; in Greek it is called loimos, from luo, to destroy; in Latin, pestis, from pessundo, to overthrow; and in English, the plague, from the Latin plaga, a stroke with a whip; alluding to the common opinion, that it is a scourge from heaven, taking vengeance on mankind for their sins."

James Tytler

James Tytler (17 December 1745 – 11 January 1804) was a Scottish apothecary and the editor of the second edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. Tytler became the first person in Britain to fly by ascending in a hot air balloon (1784). A group of historiographers wrote about him: "A social outcast, Tytler did much hack work for low pay and rarely if ever emerged from poverty. But ... he deserves to be remembered as a man of many talents – as a political and religious controversialist, scholar, journalist, poet, song writer, musician, balloonist, pharmacist, surgeon and printer. In addition ... he was an outstanding encyclopedist whose editorship of the second edition earns him a notable place in the history of encyclopedias."

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