A treatise concerning the influence of the sun and moon upon human bodies, and the diseases thereby produced

Richard Mead’s treatise examines the long-standing belief that celestial bodies exert direct effects on human health and disease. Historically, it belongs to an era when astrology, medicine, and natural philosophy still overlapped, and readers will find medical reasoning, observations about bodily rhythms, and arguments about planetary influence.

Richard Mead (1673–1754) was an English physician whose writings and intellectual milieu intersected with early Enlightenment religious and philosophical thought, though he is not primarily an esoteric author. He is sometimes noted in historical discussions of heterodox and learned medical-philosophical literature.