Thomas Beddoes to John Pinkerton, 23 December 1797
December 23rd, 1797.
I hope you will permit me, though a stranger, to endeavor to avail myself of your antiquarian knowledge towards the elucidation of a very interesting question. I wish to discover the relative frequency of consumption at different periods; and your erudition may easily enable you to point out to me some passages in old writers which may throw light upon the question. I should be much obliged to you for references to any passages which you can recall with little trouble, where prevalent diseases are most distinctly enumerated, whether poetical or prosaic, as that of Longland:
Kynde conscience then heard, and came out of the planets, And sent forth his furies, fevers, and fluxes, &c
I trust you will pardon the liberty of this application, on the ground of a custom which seems to be established in the republic of letters, that persons pursuing different tracks of inquiry should occasionally hold out light to one another, which must prove beneficial to all.
Published: Literary Correspondence of John Pinkerton, 2 vols (London, 1830), II, 19