A Comparative View of the Mortality of the Human Species, at All Ages / And of the Diseases and Casualties by Which They Are Destroyed or Annoyed. Illustrated With Charts and Tables

A Comparative View OF THE MORTALITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES, AT ALL AGES; AND OF THE DISEASES AND CASUALTIES By which they are destroyed or annoyed. ILLUSTRATED WITH CHARTS AND TABLES .
By WILLIAM BLACK, M.D. ONE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS IN LONDON: MEMBER OF SEVERAL LITERARY SOCIETIES, &C.
Published at the unanimous Request of the Medical Society of London.
LONDON: Printed for C. Dilly, in the Poultry.
1788.

TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS George Prince of Wales.
May it please your Royal Highness,
A Young and celebrated Prince, before his first Military Expedition, interrogated one of his experienced Relations and Instructors, How he should conduct himself to be respected and obeyed by his Army?—“To know more of the Profession than any of your Soldiers,” was the sage Reply; and to the renowned Cyrus, the Conqueror of the Babylonians. This Maxim is, in some Degree, applicable and pertinent throughout all the Gradations and Scale of Society. A Prince, born to the Throne of a mighty Empire, pre-eminent in its Political Constitution, and in the universal Range of the Arts and Sciences, is urged by his Personal Dignity and Public Duty, to aspire to the intrinsick Qualifications of Human Supremacy.

In the present small Tribute of Duty and Respect, I am not submitting to your Royal Highness a dry, technical Analysis of Diseases. An enlarged Survey of Medicine is intimately interwoven with most of the sublime Objects, not only of Philosophy, but, in our original Chart and Model, of Politicks also and Legislation, both in Peace and War. It transcends the British Poet’s Limitation of Human Studies, the Knowledge of Man: it embraces a Scope of Natural Knowledge far beyond any other of the learned Professions; encompassing in its spacious Orbit most of the grand Divisions of Science. A total Ignorance in this, would leave a dreary Chasm in Literature; and, like the ancient Geography, the Map and Globe of intellectual Discoveries would be half unexplored.