Doctor Mead's Short discourse explain'd

BEING A
Clearer Account
Pestilential Contagion,
AND
PREVENTING .
Nec satis est dixisse, ego mira poemata pango.
LONDON :
Printed, and Sold by W. Boreham , at the
Angel in Pater-noster Row . 1721.
Many and various are the Opinions about the Design, as well as about the Meaning and real and true Sense of the short Discourse lately writ by the Celebrated Dr. Mead , for preventing the Plague. The various Turns of the Heads of different Men, their different Capacities, and the Sublimity of the Doctor’s Style may, no doubt, occasion all this Variety in understanding Him and his Book. Some, and if we may judge by the great Run and Demand for his Book, the greatest Number of the People of all Ranks expected some Esculapian , but easy Rules, whereby they might govern and conduct their Life against so silent an Enemy as the Pestilence, which walketh in Darkness. This seems to be more than a Conjecture , because this great Demand ceas’d of a sudden, as the Plague it self commonly does, after they found the Physician had no hand in it, or that his Rules were locked up for the Favourites of his Faculty. And as the People commonly make the best Judgment of Things after a little Experience, so we find this Judgment of the Town confirmed, by what his Friends , Adepts , and other Officers , who only understand or declare what Dr. Mead would have believed; and accordingly they labour to declare, that the genuine Meaning and Design of the Celebrated Doctor was, to give a Politick Account, how the Plague may be staved off by Force of Arms.
I grant this Authority is very cogent; yet, on the other hand, if we either consider the Title Page of the Book, the great Accurateness and Veracity of Dr. Mead , as well as his signal Humility , I must crave leave to dissent, at this time, from the Reports of these Men, tho’ they carry his daily and hourly Orders: for how do such Reports sute all those his known good Qualities, the last more especially. Can any Man think it consistent with his singular Humility, to teach the Secretary of State, what has been practised in our own and other Countries for some hundred of Years: Quarantines and Pest-Houses , or if the Doctor pleases, Lazarettoes , are not unknown to English Lawyers, nor English Ministers. And therefore I think it much the fairest Course, to consider the Discourse well, because it is short, and from thence to draw the Sense of its Author.