has been variously defined by physicians, almost every founder of a new system having given a definition of disease, differing in some respects from his predecessors. For a particular account of these definitions, see Medicine.

It has always been observed, that people of particular places are subject to particular diseases, owing to their manner of living, or to the air and effluvia of the waters. The colder the country, the fewer and less violent the diseases in general are. Scheffer tells us, that the Laplanders know no such thing as the plague, or fevers of the burning kind, nor are subject to half the distempers we have. Some particular distempers, however, they are subject to more than other nations; thus they have often distempers of the eyes, which arise from their living continually in smoke, or from the glaring of the snow which covers their country for a great part of the year. Pleurises, and inflammations of the lungs, are also very common among them; and the small-pox often rages with great violence. They have one general remedy against these and all other internal diseases: this is the root of that sort of moss which they call jerth. They make a decoction of this root in the whey of rein-deer milk, and drink very large large doses of it warm, to keep up a breathing sweat. If they cannot get this, they use the stalks of Angelica boiled in the same manner. They have not so great an opinion of this remedy as of the former. The quantity of diluting liquors, however, that is drunk on these occasions, most probably contributes more to the cure of their diseases, than either of the drugs.

Hoffman has made some very curious observations on the diseases incident to particular places. He informs us, that swellings of the throat have been always common to the inhabitants of mountainous countries. The people of Switzerland, Carinthia, Styria, the Hartz-forest, Transylvania, and the inhabitants of Cronstadt, he observes, are all subject to this disease from the same cause: which probably is their using great quantities of snow water; and this, in all probability, derives its pernicious quality from the expulsion of the fixed air contained in it by the congelation, and which is not restored by melting.—The French are peculiarly troubled with fevers, worms, hydroceles, and farcoceles: and all these disorders are thought to proceed originally from their eating very large quantities of chestnuts. The British are peculiarly afflicted with hoarseness, catarrhs, coughs, dysenteries, consumptions; the women with the flor-albus or whites; and children with a particular distemper scarce known anywhere else, called the rickets. In different parts of Italy, different diseases prevail. At Naples, the venereal disease is more common than in other part of the world. At Venice people are peculiarly subject to the bleeding piles. At Rome, tertian agues and lethargic distempers are the most common; in Tuscany, the epilepsy or falling-sickness; and in Apulia, they are most subject to burning fevers, pleuritis, &c. In Spain, apoplexies are common, as also melancholy, hypochondriacal complaints, and bleeding piles. The Dutch are peculiarly subject to the scurvy, and to the stone in the kidneys. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Pomerania, and Livonia, are all terribly afflicted with the scurvy: and it is remarkable, that, in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, fevers are very common; but in Iceland, Lapland, and Finland, such a disease is scarce ever to be met with; though periapneumonies are very common in these places, and likewise diseases of the eyes, and violent pains in the head. The Russians and Tartars are afflicted with ulcers made by the cold, of the nature of what we call chillblains, but greatly worse; and in Poland there reigns a disease called the plica Polonica, so terribly offensive and painful, that scarce anything can be worse. The people of Hungary are very much subject to the gout and rheumatism: they are also more infested with lice and fleas than any other people in the world. The Germans in different parts of the empire are subject to different reigning diseases. In Westphalia, they are peculiarly troubled with periapneumonies and the itch. In Silesia, Franconia, Austria, and other places thereabout, they are very liable to fevers of the burning kind, to bleedings at the nose, and to other hemorrhages; also to the gout, inflammations, and consumptions. In Münster, they have purple fevers; and the children are peculiarly infested with worms. In Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace, there are very few diseases; but what they have are principally burning fevers and pleuritis. At Constantinople the plague always rages; and in the West India islands, malignant fevers, and the most terrible colics. See Medicine.

Diseases of Horses. See Farriery. Diseases of Dogs. See Dogs. Diseases of Plants. See Agriculture, no 67, et seq., and Blight, Mildew, Moss, &c.