Plague and Pestilence in Literature and Art - Paperback

by Raymond Crawfurd (Author)

1914. This volume represents substantially the FitzPatrick Lectures which the author had the privilege of delivering at the Royal College of Physicians in 1912. The scattered records of literature afford a valuable, but neglected, contribution to the study of epidemic pestilence. They show us pestilence as an affair of the mind, as medical literature has shown it as an affair of the body. They teach us too the humiliating lesson that, in spite of the apparent growth of humanity, in spite of the development and dissemination of scientific knowledge, human nature has again and again reverted to the primitive instincts of savagery in face of the crushing calamity of epidemic pestilence. And in this homing instinct of the human mind is to be found the clue to much in the records of literature and art that else is wholly meaningless.