WHITMORE, Humphrey.

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Febris anomala or, The new disease that Now rageth throughout England. Rare first edition, important both as a contemporary account of a national pandemic - likely a form of influenza - and for the prescient hypothesis that London's air pollution exacerbated the problem.Whitmore discusses the disease's contagion and symptoms (including coughing) and suggests various palliatives and cures. He notes in the final section that the disease is prevalent in London, and that the poor air quality is the likely reason: "London, which is alwaies covered with a cloud of smoak, which so infests and disturbs the lungs, with that corrosive salt it carries with it, that it puts many on the rack of cruell and tormenting coughs, driving so many into consumptions, that I think I may justly say there dyes more of that disease in London, than in the whole nation besides" (p. 123).In 1649 the author was awarded an honorary medical degree from Oxford for medical services rendered to the parliamentary cause in the civil war, where he was active as a physician in Staffordshire and Shropshire.Bound at front and rear are seven blanks of learned manuscript notes, in an early 19th-century hand, on other authorities' writings on disease. References are made to Jean-François Coste (1741-1819), chief physician of the French expeditionary forces in the American revolution, and Richard Mead (1673-1754), a seminal writer in the science of contagion.Only this copy can be traced at auction; ESTC locates 11 insti

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