Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems онлайн

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To send a well arm’d air balloon

To take and colonize the moon.

A most inveterate believer

In foreign source of yellow fever,

We say his sconce must be fuliginous,

Who holds that plague to be indigenous.

As to th’ extent of its dominion

We’ll give our medical opinion;

When next we greet your worships, please

To give security for fees.

This dire disorder is contagious

And its contagion is outrageous,[36]

’Twill rage like wild-fire, anywhere,

On dryest soil, in purest air.

It is an animalcule, which

Is propagated like the itch,—

Communicated like small pox,

But can’t be bred in dirty docks.

From patient’s breath an emanation,

By contact or approximation

It may, as learned men have stated,

Be everywhere disseminated.

From friends infected, children, wives,

Let all men scamper then, for lives;

The wretches shun like Charon’s ferry,

And leave the dead themselves to bury.

’T is true some simpletons have said

A kind of fever may be bred

By heat conjoin’d with putrefaction,

Which suits contagionists to a fraction.