The History of Epidemics in the Middle Ages. J. F. C. Hecker

      GENERAL PREFACE.

       Table of Contents

      The Council of the Sydenham Society having deemed Hecker’s three treatises on different Epidemics occurring in the Middle Ages worthy of being collected into a volume, and laid before its members in an English dress, I have felt much pleasure in presenting them with the copyright of the Black Death; in negociating for them, the purchase of that of the Dancing Mania, whereof I could resign only my share of a joint interest; and, in preparing for the press these productions, together with a translation, now for the first time made public, of the Sweating Sickness. This last work, from its greater length, and from the immediate relation of its chief subject to our own country, may be considered the most interesting and important of the series.

      Professor Hecker is generally acknowledged to be the most learned medical historian, and one of the most able medical writers in Germany. His numerous works suffice to show not only with what zeal he has laboured, but also how highly his labours have been appreciated by his countrymen; and when I state that, with one trifling exception, they have all been translated into other languages, I furnish a fair proof of the estimation in which they are held in foreign countries; and, so far at least as regards the originals, a full justification of the Council of the Sydenham Society in their choice on the present occasion.

      The “Schwarze Tod,” or “Black Death,” was published in 1832; and I was prompted to undertake its translation, from a belief that it would prove interesting at a moment when another fearful epidemic, the Cholera, with which it admitted of comparison in several particulars, was fresh in the memory of men. The “Tanzwuth,” or “Dancing Mania,” came out shortly afterwards; and, as it appeared to me that, though relating to a less terrific visitation, it possessed an equal share of interest, and, holding a kind of middle place between a physical and a moral pestilence, furnished subject of contemplation for the general as well as the professional reader, I determined on adding it also to our common stock of medical literature. When the “Englische Schweiss,” or “Sweating Sickness,” which contained much collateral matter little known in England, and which completed