prevalent, so many persons are exposed to the contagion without being affected. This argument is founded upon the supposition, that because almost every body is susceptible to the contagion of small-pox, measles, and scarlet fever, therefore almost every body must be susceptible to the contagion of the plague if it be contagious; in other words, that the laws which govern the eruptive contagious fevers must be the same as govern all contagious fevers. This argument we have already destroyed, by observing that it takes for granted the very point in dispute, that the eruptive contagious fevers are the only contagious fevers. If because many who are exposed to the contagion of the plague escape it, we are to infer that the exposure is not the cause of the plague in those who take it, let us see to what conclusions we shall arrive. Of those who are bitten by a rabid animal, many are not affected by hydrophobia; therefore the bite of a rabid animal is not the cause of hydrophobia. Of those exposed to a cold and variable season, many are not affected with pulmonary inflammations; therefore cold and variable weather is not the cause of pulmonary inflammations. Of those oppressed by the intense heat of the season, many are not seized with the cholera; therefore a hot season is not the cause of cholera. But a truce to this-the causes of disease are not things which invariably produce them, but which produce them sufficiently often to leave no doubt that they are to be considered their causes. Every body is susceptible to small-pox, measles, and scarlet fever; but then, having had them once, he never has them again. Many people are not susceptible, at least for a time, to the plague; but then, having had it once, they may have it repeatedly— singleness of attack is a compensation for universal susceptibilityfrequent insusceptibility is a compensation for the liability to repeated attacks. Nature, or rather Providence, abounds in these compensations.

We might now leave the subject, but there are a few statements of the anti-contagionists which it will be useful to notice, not as important in themselves, but as showing the structure of the minds of those who advance them, how little they are to be trusted even in the statement of a fact, and how unfit they are as guides on so momentous a subject. A writer in Blackwood's Magazine, alluding to the anonymous expositor of Dr. M'Lean's whims, says, it is true I know nothing of the subject, but the Article appears to me to be quite conclusive.' It is impossible to put it more happily-the exposition does appear quite conclusive to one who knows nothing of the subject. The most potent arguments are facts, and when the teacher cares little, and the student is totally ignorant, whether they are accurate or no, the business of conviction is an easy task. An instance or two will show what we mean. 'The

The small-pox secretes a contagious matter which is contained in its pustules-the measles secretes a contagious matter which is contained in its vesicles. Apply a portion of the fluid contained in the pustules of the one and the vesicles of the other to a healthy person, it will excite in the latter the same train of symptoms as existed in the individual in whom the contagious matter was secreted.'-West. Rev. No. V. p. 138. And again-the small-pox is never without its pustules, the measles is never without its vesicles.'-Ibid. p. 139.

The writer has good reason for his distaste for medical authorities, and his preference of men of general science for his judges; for here is a fact, one of the main pillars of his argument, which such judges would receive without suspicion, but which every medical man on earth knows to be utterly false. The truth is, that though vesicles sometimes occur during the progress of measles, they are by no means the essential or characteristic eruption of the disease; the characteristic eruption of measles is a rash, containing no matter to inoculate with, and no one ever thought of producing the measles by applying a portion of the fluid contained in its vesicles. Dr. Francis Home, of Edinburgh, who, in the year 1759, attempted to inoculate the measles, expressly says, there was no matter,' and therefore he was obliged to employ the blood. Again,

* Were epidemic diseases really propagated by contagion, it could not possibly be a matter of controversy; the facts establishing the truth would be so clear, so numerous, so overwhelming, as to place it beyond all question. No one can doubt, no one ever did doubt, that the small-pox is contagious. This alone must be sufficient to decide the matter in the judgment of every philosophical mind.'-Ibid. p. 147.

Now we beg leave to inform the philosophical minds' to whom an appeal is here made, that some one did doubt that the small-pox was contagious; no less a person than the greatest physician England ever produced, Sydenham. He saw the smallpox when its natural mode of diffusion was not interrupted by inoculation or vaccination, as it now is, and yet this great man had no suspicion that it was contagious. In his time a belief in the non-contagiousness of small-pox was not only the medical, but the popular opinion. Gadbury, the astrologer, in his London's Deliverance Predicted,' published in the year 1665, says, I say then, it (the plague) ought not to be deemed infectious at all, at least not more infectious than small-por, scurvy, pleurisy, ague, gout.'

Mistatements, however, of the kind which we have just noticed, are not matter of surprize, for the argument is not addressed to medical men; it appeals from their judgment to that of men of general science acquainted with the laws of evidence. We come now to a different class, and we suspect that for the future even a

knowledge

knowledge of the laws of evidence may be found an inconvenient qualification in the men of science who are to decide the question. For example we are told that

it is the custom in Turkey for the relations of those who died of the plague, to wear the clothes of the deceased, or to sell them at the public bazaar; they are never destroyed, they are invariably either worn by the relatives or sold at the public market; there is no instance on record of the disease being communicated by these means. The persons who deal in the clothes are not infected, the persons who wear them remain free from the disease.'-West. Rev. No. V. p. 160.

A naturalist who had affirmed that domesticated hogs were infested with a species of vermin which did not infest wild hogs, was asked how he knew it; whether he had combed all the wild hogs in the world? So we may ask whether the anti-contagionists have traced all the old clothes which are worn by the relatives or sold at the bazaar?

When Dr. M'Lean was examined before the Committee on contagion, he said,

I used to walk into the city of Constantinople, even after I had the disease, and go through the thickest of the people, visiting the coffeehouses and other frequented places; nor was the disease by that means propagated.'

How does he know? did he inquire into the fate of all the people whom he had jostled in the streets, and sat by in the coffee-houses?

If we admit the fact that many people are exposed to the clothes of the sick without catching the disease, it proves no more than the fact that many are exposed to the sick themselves without catching it; and this we have already considered. It is not even of this value to the anti-contagionists, till they have satisfied inquirers on a few preliminary points in each case, which seem to have escaped them as of no importance. Were the clothes of the dead worn during their illness? Were they worn during that stage of the disease which is infectious? To what extent have they been exposed to the air since the death of their owner? A lancet dipped in vaccine matter kept for a few days in the pocket, and then used for vaccination, with all the advantages of intentional immersion in the contagious fluid, and careful insertion under the skin in the act of vaccination, is more likely to fail than to succeed in giving the disease; and hence the importance of bringing together the person to be vaccinated with the person from whom he is to be vaccinated, and performing the operation with fresh

matter.

So much for the evidence in support of this sweeping statement that there is no instance on record of the communication of the

disease

disease by these means;' and now let us hear a little evidence against it.

It is a notion,' says Dr. Russell, 'prevalent at Aleppo, that a plague cannot subsist in the city any considerable time without being imparted to the Jews. Many of that nation are employed as brokers and pedlars in most parts of the town, and numbers who deal in old clothes daily pass through the streets, purchasing their wares from all ranks of people. In this manner it is supposed the distemper is transported to the Jewish

district,'

And again, says Dr. Russell,

"if substances tainted by the sick should be conveyed into sccluded retreats, and persons happen to be seized with the distemper, can it be ascribed not to contagion, but to terror? and the instances here alluded to are not the creation of fancy, but strictly consonant to repeated experience in Turkey.' In another place Dr. Russell says,

I met with many instances of the disease being communicated by coverlids, carpets, and apparel purchased from infected houses.'

Dr. Pugnet, who was with the French army in Egypt, states that at Jaffa, an apothecary dying of the plague, his neck-handkerchiefs were divided among, and worn by, fourteen persons: all these were seized with the plague, and had bubos in their necks.

The anti-contagionists assert that the plague never was in Holland, although the Dutch have no quarantine laws. That singular but laborious writer Noah Webster has collected accounts of no less than fourteen plagues which ravaged Flanders and Holland at various periods, in one of which, at Delft, in the year 1557, the dead bodies were so numerous that the people fought for the coffins. As to the absence of quarantine laws, if this were true, how happens it that, as soon as England only relaxes her's, and thereby approaches the state of law said to exist in Holland, the several powers of the Mediterranean turn round upon her, and compel every vessel from her ports to perform quarantine before entering their ports?-a conduct which they do not observe towards the vessels of Holland, which undergo no quarantine at all. On inquiring of the Dutch authorities in this country, we learn that the Dutch have quarantine laws, but that, when a vessel arrives from the Levant with a clean bill of health, they are not always strictly enforced. Dr. Granville, who seems to have taken much pains to ascertain the fact, gives the following as the result of his inquiries, in his letter on this subject to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Dutch trade in the Mediterranean, in former times, suffered much from the Algerine cruizers; in consequence of which the Dutch merchantmen trading in the Mediterranean were, from the early ages of the Republic, directed to assemble at

Leghorn,

Leghorn, from which port they sailed under convoy to Holland This arrangement leads to considerable detention at Leghorn, which, although originally intended as a security against pirates, served in point of fact the purpose of a quarantine, Leghorn being, as is well known, the port of all others in which the quarantine regulations were the most perfect, and most rigidly observed. In addition to this, whenever any Dutch vessel quitted a port where the plague was raging, the Dutch consul at that port refused her a' passe-port de mer,' without which she was not safe in sailing through the Mediterranean, nor was she admitted into Holland.

It would be an endless task to go through what may be called the collateral absurdities in the reasoning of the anti-contagionists -yet we must mention one or two instances. Thus it is said that. the doctrine of contagion is selfish and inhuman, and prevents the due performance of the duties of the healthy to the sick; while the doctrine of epidemic diseases remedies the evil. Yet the same persons say,

'People are attacked (with the plague) in proportion as the inhabitants of unaffected expose themselves to the air of affected places. The visits of the inhabitants of an unaffected to an affected place is [are] attended with a certain increase of sickness.'-West. Rev. No. V. p. 145.,

Is it possible that they should not see that their objection applies more strongly against this doctrine than against that of contagion; for if the latter teaches us to avoid the sick, the former teaches us to avoid the very air which surrounds the sick. The latter says only, do not touch a patient affected with the plague, or the clothes which he has worn; you may go within a certain distance of him-observe his symptoms-prescribe for him-carry him medicine and refreshment. But the latter says, if you go into the chamber, or the house, or the very neighbourhood in which the disease is raging, you expose yourself to danger.

Another absurdity is, that the doctrine of contagion was a popish trick, and never heard of before the year 1547, when it was invented by Pope Paul III. as an excuse for removing the Council of Trent to Bologna. Two learned foreigners, Dr. C. F. H. Mark and Dr. Qmodei, of Milan, have just published most satisfactory refutations of this statement. That of the former is entitled Origines Contagii; that of the latter is contained in the twenty-second volume of the Milan Annals of Medicine: of both an elaborate analysis is given in the Edinburgh Medical Journal. It was hardly necessary to expend so much talent and learning, as these gentlemen have displayed, upon a notion unworthy of serious refutation. As far back as Thucydides and Aristotle, through a long succession of historians and poets

down