Germ of an Idea

Margaret DeLacy is an independent scholar. She received her Ph.D. in British history from Princeton University, USA. She is the author of Prison Reform in Lancashire, 1700-1850: A Study in County Administration and several articles on British medical history.

• Preface 1. Introduction: Medical Theory In Early Modern Europe 2. Restoration Medicine And The Dissenters 3. Populist Writing On Diseases In The Late Seventeenth Century 4. The Search For Middle Ground: Disease Theory As Natural History 5. Animalcules And Animals 6. English Contagionism And Hans Sloane's Circle 7. An English Treatise On Living Contagion: Benjamin Marten's New Theory Of Consumptions, 1720 8. Smallpox Inoculation And The Royal Society, 1700-1723 9. Contagion And Plague In The Eighteenth Century Conclusion

"The book's importance to historians of this era and medical historians especially is self-evident, because it occupies a lacuna in the scholarship. ... Although this book is written for scholarly audiences and densely packed, it is clear and accessible to general readers with avid interest in medical history. For Health Humanities professionals, this book underscores-with a twist-one of the primary lessons we hope to teach our medical students." (Sandra G. Weems, MedHum Daily Dose, medhumdailydose.com, June, 2016)