On True Plague

Document notes

Original title: De pestilentia vera A compact quarto medical disputation of forty-eight pages, organized into twenty-four numbered theses and composed in Latin (with some Greek terms retained), defended by the licentiate Abraham Vater under the presiding professor Johann Gottfried Berger at the Wittenberg medical faculty. The work coins and defends the category of pestilentia vera ("true plague"), distinguishing genuine contagious plague from any generic epidemic constitution, and argues that true plague has one efficient cause only—contagium, a septic effluvium of very fine particles transmitted body to body from a seed-bed (seminarium)—while corrupted air, the stars, and dietary excess are demoted to mere disposing conditions. It opens with a prologue on the imported venereal disease (traced from the West Indies through Barcelona to Naples), refutes the atmospheric and putrefaction etiologies through corpuscular and iatromechanical reasoning, and sets out a sanitary and therapeutic program of segregation, quarantine, and flight, closing with a candid admission that the specific cure still lies hidden in nature. 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

• Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here
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Document excerpt

G. VII. Vol 52492/P 2. B. V. RECTORE MAGNIFICENTISSIMO SERENISSIMO PRINCIPE REGIO AC DOMINO DN. FRIDERICO AVGVSTO ELECT. SAXON. HEREDE DISERTATIONEM SOLENNEM DE PESTILENTIA VERA PRAESIDE PRORECTORE MAGNIFICO D. IO. GOTHOFREDO BERGERO ARCHIATRO REGIO, COLLEG. MED. SENIORE ET PROF. PRIM. PRO LICENTIA IMPETRANDI SVMMOS IN ARTE SALVTARI HONORES P. P. M. ABRAHAMVS VATER VITEMBERG. A. D. APRIL. cl[.] I5 cc X. IN AVDITORIO MAIORI HORIS ANTE ET POST MERIDIEM CONSVETIS. VITEMBERGAE, PRELO GERDESIANO.