1881: or, Peritolioa and Pestilence.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3158, 2 April 1879, Page 2

1881: or, Peritolioa and Pestilence.

What is nci to happen in this erentful year? Some announce it as the period when this earth shall pass away and be no more, when new heavens and a new earth shall appear. A scientific paper unravels the mystery, which has, however, been long known to astronomers, and it is even said to be recorded on the Great Pyramid of Egypt. If there is anything in " astrological eriology," we are approaching one of the most pestilential periods in the earth's history. Since the commencement of the Christian era, the perihela of the four great planets of the solar system—Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, and Neptune—have not been coincident. But this is about to occur, and in the language of Dr Knapp, who has traced the history, of the greatest epidemics that ever afflicted the human race to the perihela of these planets, there will soon be lively times for the doctors. The theory is that when one or more of the large planets is nearest to the sun, the temperature and condition of our atmosphere are so disturbed as to cause injurious vicissitudes, terrible rains, prolonged drought, etc., resulting in the destruction of crops, and pestilence among human beings and domestic animals. Dr Knapp has collected a mass of statistical data, all going to show that perihelion periods have always been marked by unusual mortality, and that sickness and death have invariably corresponded with the number of planets in perihelion at the same .time. In tracing the history of epidemics for more than two thousand years, Dr Knapp finds the facts in all cases to validate the theory. Thus, in the sixth and again in the six* teenth century, three of these planet* were coincident in perihelion, and those were the most pestilential times of the Christian era.

But soon we are to have, for the first time in two thousand years, all four of these planets against us. They will be at their nearest approach to the sun in or soon after 1880, so tint for a few years, say from 1880 to 1885, the vitality of every living thing will be put to a severe and trying ordeal. Some persons think they see, in the signs of the times, evidences of the giieat disasters in the immediate future. The excessive heat, the' unexampled cold, the prevalencs of flood and the disasters at sea, the general* failure of the potato crop, the wide-spread fever among human beings and the equal prevalence of the epizootic among animals, are mentioned as among the premonitions of the rapidly approaohment of the perihelion.

Well, " to be forewarned is to be fore* armed." Accident excepted, we know very well the persons of more vigorous constitutions and hygienic habits will have the better chance to survive what* ever adverse influence the extraordinary perihela will occasion. It is well known to physicians, that in all pestilences, plague, typhus, small-pox, cholera, murrain, etc., the intemperate, the dissipated, and those whoso sanitary conditions are bad, furnish the victims.