ffice was created for a man who had a special genius for this form
of study. It was delightful to himself, and he made it delightful to
others. He is regarded as the founder of historical pathology. He
studied disease in relation to the history of man, made his study yield
to men outside his own profession an important chapter in the history of
civilisation, and even took into account physical phenomena upon the
surface of the globe as often affecting the movement and character of
epidemics.

The account of "The Black Death" here translated by Dr. Babington was
Hecker's first important work of this kind. It was published in 1832,
and was followed in the same year by his account of "The Dancing Mania."
The books here given are the two that first gave Hecker a wide
reputation. Many other such treatises followed, among them, in 1865, a
treatise on the "Great Epidemics of the Middle Ages." Besides his
"History of Medicine," which, in its second volume, reached into the
fourteenth century, and all his smaller treatises, Hecker wrote a large
number of articles in Encyclopaedias and Medical Journals. Professor
J.F.K. Hecker was, in a more interesting way, as busy as Professor A.F.
Hecker, his father, had been. He transmitted the family energies to an
only son, Karl von Hecker, born in 1827, who distinguished himself
greatly as a Professor of Midwifery, and died in 1882.

Benjamin Guy Babington, the translator of these books of Hecker's,
belonged also to a family in which the study of Medicine has passed from
father to son, and both have been writers. B.G. Babington was the son of
Dr. William Babington, who was physician to Guy's Hospital for some years
before 1811, when the extent of his private practice caused him to
retire. He died in 1833. His son, Benjamin Guy Babington, was educated
at the Charterhouse, saw service as a midshipman, served for seven years
in India, returned to England, graduated as physician at Cambridge in
1831. He distinguished himself by inquiries into the cholera epidemic in
1832, and translated these pieces of Hecker's in 1833, for publication by
the Sydenham Society. He afterwards translated Hecker's other treatises
on epidemics of the Middle Ages. Dr. B.G. Babington was Physician to
Guy's Hospital from 1840 to 1855, and was a member of the Medical Council
of the General Board of Health. He died on the 8th of April, 1866.

H.M.

THE BLACK DEATH

CHAPTER I--GENERAL OBSERVAT