_SL: CfcCg^Cc '.k^.

-£C c

<3%C. <J%
	'feCr
tc See c?& S	
■	
	
	
cc<

Hfe
(T
P_£_P__ffi	__P_aw ♦rtj£,,«
	__r-_*7T/_7_W
v-"IMdW_W^	--P^amT^-K^f
	B_K «t* -<■__.
	____r~ **? ifuMSL
	»3R7.: v. Mb
	jfe^Sj^t *-v--:''l2&
!■■ 4b* * ^4L ^**	9r3B__i
rS_3_R__	Br<dB__&4**ft
<CL^sL.^s	«rar"<v 4

=-:< cocr   s^J_^
 ^ cor   c ^  «-- «<~
 <£ CC<~   «<C  <£ ' < <



  % 5«&C_  «*<C «t    >L5  <

Lifj'M

ccLoe..
<r «__. c '<	.**- c<^ '
___T *•"■	<c c < <*
<_^£ <	-^<C
^*^i~ *#'- v	_£L' Kcr
_KHCT'« '<	CT CCcc
,_K~ C;.<< '	^Tj a<z «
cTc <c< <	^<<t «
«C <- <sc*;.*	^l <xr<r
	
	<T(<-<r
«C «cfee	•'<e~tc &

  -c^<rc c

   rc :<' ^ '





■-  c<  St
"C €U~cc<r  <0 <
;<£ C.(CC  <j  c




< CC  <
* CC  C^

3 CC ^
 
\y
sl
*3£©rte*
Surgeon "feeneral'fOffice      S

 6V
tsecieon,
"a
 
'?
Ik 
V
lw~- 
THOUGHTS
&ttavautiue antr otijer Sauitavs Systems,
BEING AN ESSAY WHICH RECEIVED THE
PRIZE OF THE BOYLSTON MEDICAL COMMITTEE,
HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
IN AUGUST, 1834.
BY  CHARLES CALDWELL, M. D.
Veritas atque utilitas antiquitati prceponenda sint.
      /.-  -l i '->
      *% % J ^~


       BOSTON:

MARSH, CAPEN & LYON,

         1834. 
WA
l<?3^- 
E S SAY.
  " Are the Restrictions on the entrance of vessels into Port,
called  Quarantine  Laws,  useful ?   If so, in what cases  should
they be applied ? "

        Veritas atque utilitas antiquitati prceponendce sint.

  Considered in relation to the matter which it comprises, and
in its  bearing on  the interest and  welfare  of man, this  is  the
most  important question belonging to  the  science  of Medical
Police.  Nor  is  it, perhaps, in these  respects, surpassed by
any one connected with medicine.  It forms, therefore, a theme
well fitted for  discussion, under the  auspices of a public insti-
tution, established for the promotion  of professional knowledge.
Not restricted  to individuals  or  circum"."ed communities,
its  limits  are  already commensurate with  the concerns  of all
commercial  nations,  and  may  become so  with those  of  the
whole human race.   It involves, moreover, in nearly an equal
degree, health and  life,  liberty,  property,  and sound  morals
—boons,   which  give to  human  existence its  chief   value,
 ind its only charm.   In  fine,  there  is scarcely, in  the  whole 
4
range of civil society, an interest or immunity exempt from its
influences.   It is  worthy, therefore,  of a thorough examination.
Nor can  such a scrutiny be either  simple,  brief, or  easy.   It
must  embrace  principles of great extent and  importance, with
no  small amount of detail, in illustration  and  proof of them.
  As it will shortly appear,  of  necessity, that I am no friend  of
Quarantine  Laws, in their present form and condition, I may  as
well avow it now.   Not only do  they seem to  me to be founded
in error and  superstition ;  their  arbitrary principles  and unre-
lenting  spirit  pronounce  them a  relic of barbarous times.    In
these respects, nothing in the history of despotism can  surpass
them.   Though professedly intended for  the  benefit of man,
they are strangers, within their sphere, to  human right, and hu-
man sympathy.  To say that  they make sport and  food of the
sufferings and misfortunes of man, would scarcely be extravagant.
They may, and often do, prohibit at pleasure,  during indefinite
periods, and under heavy penalties, all forms  of business, and,  as
far  as they can, of social intercourse, whether public or private—
invade personal freedom, by confining those who become obnox-
ious to them to their own dwellings, or in places worse than com-
mon prisons; assume the right to destroy property, to the ruin of its
owners, on mere supposititious ground; and have been frequently
carried  to the taking away  of life.   To finish  the picture, the
officers intrusted with the administration of them are too gen-
erally as unfit for their  duties  as  ignorance and prejudice, cru-
elty and the pride  of station can render them.  Though these
remarks do not apply to our own country  so strikingly as  to
others,  they, notwithstanding, apply so far to it, as to amount  to
a serious evil, not to call it  a national disgrace.
  If such be the character and scope of these laws, and so des-
potic and  opprjj£^j the execution  of them, they  should  be
either  proved to be founded in truth, public usefulness, and ab-
solute necessity, or be suitably modified, or entirely abolished.
Nor ought a strict and  solenui inquiry,  which of these steps is
preferable, to be any longer  postponed.  It  need  scarcely  be
added, that  to endeavor to  shed  some  light on the subject re-
ferred to, constitutes the aim of this dissertation. 
•J
   From various causes, the inquiry, as I feel compelled to con-
duct it, is  surrounded with difficulties.   Among these, the high
authority and  deep-rooted prejudices it  must encounter, are not
the least,  it will also clash with some of the public institutions
and long-standing practices of our country, and with the person-
al interests of those concerned in  them.  For these reasons, I
am aware  that my situation is  delicate,  and that I am about to
incur no inconsiderable  hazard  of giving offence.  Confident,
however, that no reform of abuses, or correction of errors, can
be  either affected  or recommended in  any of  the  established
usages  of  society, without awakening unkind feelings, and ex-
citing  opposition,  I assume the  risk and  responsibility, regard-
less of  their weight ; and, while it  shall  be my care to violate
none of the observances due to other writers, I shall  treat the
subject under discussion, with the  freedom and  firmness  which
truth  and the importance of it  may seem  to require.
   Systems of Quarantine,  being  ancient institutions,  are the
growth of  a period noted alike for ignorance, superstition, and
groundless hypotheses, especially as related to the causes, pre-
vention, and  removal of  pestilential diseases, and  most other
physical evils; and it is worthy of remark, as  throwing some
light on their present  condition, and the  estimation in  which
they should be held, that, neither in principle nor practice, have
they undergone any material changes since they were first con-
trived.   In these points, as well  as  in their spirit  and adminis-
tration, they are substantially the same now that they were at
the time of their establishment, during the darkness  of the four-
teenth  century.  The modifications that have been made in them,
have been far  from  keeping pace with the progress of th^t branch
of science by  which they should  be regulated.   They manifest,
therefore, no practical wisdom, and  have done  no  appreciable
good.   I speak of the evil they constitute, as it prevails through-
out the  world.  In the  United  States,  and a few other places,
it is somewhat mitigated, but is  still sufficiently annoying in its
operations, and  grievous in its  effects.   Quarantine establish-
ments, then, are still the product of the fourteenth, with but little
affinity to any  of the institutions of the nineteenth century.  That 
6
consideration, alone, renders them objects  of well-founded sus-
picion,  the  date of their origin being, in so high a degree, un-
friendly to truth and usefulness, in all that  depends on physical
science.   And it will appear, hereafter, that every other form of
evidence bearing on the subject, concurs with this, in testifying
against them.   A brief history of Quarantines will show, in part,
the correctness of this statement.
   Their very name, which means a  purifying process  of forty
days, proclaims the superstition on  which  they were  founded.
Nor has  that  basis, faulty as it was,  been replaced  by a better.
Why forty days'?  The answer is easy.   Lent, the period  of
abstinence instituted by the  Catholic  church, for  the  purifica-
tion of the soul, lasted forty days; and that, again, was founded on
the forty days fast in the wilderness.   Hence, said  the  supersti-
tious  institutors of Quarantines, the term of forty days is requi-
site to purify merchandise, persons, ships, and other articles,
from  pestilential poison.   No  doubt  the forty years' wandering
of the Israelites in the  desert, before they were deemed worthy
to enter  and enjoy  the land of promise, had its influence in  the
establishment  of those  mischievous contrivances.  Be this latter
supposition as it may,  the time  allotted for purification had a su-
perstitious and visionary, not a scientific or experimental origin.
Nor is this all.  It will appear presently, that, on principles of selfish
policy,  unwarranted by science,  the  Catholic  church  has had
much more influence  in establishing and maintaining a belief in
the contagious nature of certain diseases, and in the erection and
continuance of Quarantine  establishments, than is  generally im-
agined.
   Quarantines had, perhaps, originally, some regard to the  con-
tagion of small pox; but they were founded chiefly, at first,  and
rest exclusively now,  on the hypothesis of the  contagious nature
of pestilential diseases, especially of oriental plague.   The con-
firmation of that hypothesis might sustain them, while its refuta-
tion must destroy them, as  soon as prejudice and fashion can be
uprooted, and correct principles be brought to bear on the  sub-
ject.   That refutation is now in progress, and, to aid in its com-
pletion,  shall be a leading object of this paper. 
7
  Quarantine  institutions  are of Italian origin; and, as  already
mentioned, were first founded in the fourteenth  century,—a pe-
riod  memorable  for ignorance and gloomy superstition.   The
science of  nature being scarcely yet in embryo, the medical no-
tions of that date are  of no  value.    This we learn from the
works  in medicine, that were  then published,  even by the  most
distinguished physicians, as well as from  authentic histories of
the time.   Astrology and  fanaticism, with  their entire brood of
dreams and fantasies, were then in their zenith; and the influence
of the celestial bodies,  the immediate finger of  Heaven, the min-
istry of angels, or the craft of witches and evil spirits, was looked
to, as the source of almost all that was extraordinary.  Nor did
ignorance fail  to render extraordinary  and  wonderful then,  many
things  that are familiar and  common-place  now.   Two of the
strongest  features of the  age, were a belief in the marvellous,
and a want of knowledge  of the laws of nature.
   During this condition of the human  mind, and in the midst of
such gross intellectual  rubbish, arose the hypothesis of pestilen-
tial contagion, and of the protective influence of Quarantine estab-
lishments.   Neither from the time nor place of its origin, there-
fore, does  that  hypothesis derive any weight, but the reverse.
Its strong resemblance to the other popular  delusions of the age
indicates its close alliance with  them.  It would  be as easy to
prove,  that the  pestilential  diseases,  which visited  Italy, and
other parts of Europe, during that period,  came from the malign
influence of the stars, from witchcraft,  or demonism, as that they
were  imported from Egypt, the  Levant,  or any  other portion*
of Asia or Africa.  However heterodox this  sentiment may be
thought by many, facts will be adduced hereafter to sustain it.
   I am not ignorant, that  a belief in the contagiousness of  pesti-
lence is represented, by some writers,  as the product of a much
earlier period, than that  just specified.   It is asserted to have
been entertained by the physicians of ancient Greece and Rome..
With no valid authority for this assertion  am I acquainted, nor
do I believe that  any  exists.  Unsuccessful, myself, in all my
attempts to find a clause to support it,  in the works of any of the
ancient physicians, no contagionist has been  able to show me 
s
one.   When, in  discussing  the  subject, I have  demanded  the
authority for attributing a belief in pestilential contagion, to Hip-
pocrates, Galen, and other ancient writers, I have been requested,
in reply, to prove that they did not believe in it.   Nor  is this all.
It was gravely asserted, that my failure to  establish  their  disbe-
lief would be  proof of their belief!   Declarations to this  effect
have even found  their way into print.   But  they are  unworthy
of a reply;  and, being but a  mockery of reason, should pass un-
noticed, or  be given to derision.   Infer that Hippocrates did be-
lieve in pestilential  contagion, because the contrary cannot be
proved!  As well might the inference be drawn, that his eyes were
green, and his hair  blue, because no proof exists that the former
were gray, and the  latter auburn,—or that he had  a knowledge of
small  pox, because  he has not denied it !  Contagiousness  is one
of the strongest  features of disease.   The  fact, therefore, that
Hippocrates,  Galen,  and the Greek and Roman physicians  gen-
erally, have not recorded their belief in it, as respects pestilential
complaints,  is evidence of their  disbelief,  or of their having
formed no  opinion  on the  subject.  From  such premises, no
other  deduction can be legitimately drawn.
   But this is  not all.   Hippocrates virtually proclaimed his be-
lief, that plague is an atmospherical disease, and therefore  an ep-
idemic, propagated  otherwise than  by contagion.  He, on  one
occasion, predicted an invasion of Athens, by a pestilential com-
plaint, which was raging  at a distance from the city, in the  direc-
tion from which the prevailing wind of the season blew.    The
plague was in Africa, and the wind was southerly.  Hence,  said
the sage, the malady will be brought to Greece by the atmosphere
—not  by contagion.
   Grant, however, that Hipprocates and all  the other  distinguish-
ed physicians of antiquity, those  of Egypt among the rest, did
believe in the contagiousness of plague,—does  it  follow,  that
their  opinion  was  necessarily correct ?  Is the  truth  of  an hy-
pothesis always in the precise ra'io of its age?  And is it  inevit-
ably so ?   No one  will  maintain a notion  so preposterous.   In
all matters involving a knowledge of nature, the reverse is much
more   likely to be  true.  The ancients, whether physicians or 
9
philosophers, had but a meagre acquaintance with the science of
nature.   Were I to say that they had no  accurate  acquaintance
with it  at all, the  position might  be maintained,  by evidence
drawn  from their own writings.  Their views in  relation to  it,
were  crude and conjectural,—the product of  fancy and abstrac-
tion, rather than of  observation and judgment.  Nor were they
more so, on any points, than on those of the causes and nature of
disease.   Were any physician, of  the  present day, seriously to
avow his belief in  all the hypotheses  of Hippocrates,  Galen,
Theophrastus, and other ancient luminaries in medicine, he would
be held as insane.
   It has been intimated,  that the belief in pestilential contagion
was much strengthened, and, in the mind of nearly all Christendom
at the time, confirmed, by the authority of the Catholic church,
or rather of the Pope, then deemed sacred and inviolable, being
exerted in favor of it.  This fact, not, perhaps, generally known,
is of much more moment  in the present discussion, than it may,
at first  sight, appear to be.   In weighing  it, and  making a fair
estimate of it, it must be  borne in  mind, that, at  the period to
be hereafter specified, the papal authority was irresistible, even
in thought, over a great part of the Christian world.  In  many
places,  to offer resistance to it, was to hazard life.   The  dictum
of his Holiness was considered tantamount to a  voice from heaven.
To disbelieve or  oppose  it,  therefore, was accounted heresy,
and might bring down on  the offender the  tortures  of the inqui-
sition.    Hence, whatever  cause the Head of the  Church es-
poused,  no matter how unreasonable, or absurd, was sure,  for the
time, to prevail.
   Of the history of the belief in pestilential contagion,  but little
is known for the space of a  century after  its  origin.  We are
informed that systems of Quarantine were established in Genoa,
Milan, Venice, and  other parts of Italy; and there our knowledge
of the matter ends.  The  medical writers of  the day, say but
little on  the subject.   But, in 1545, the  belief received  a fresh
impulse, and an accession of strength, to which it had been pre-
viously a stranger.   In that year, Pope Paul  III. convoked  re-
luctantly the Council of Trent.   His  reluctance in the transac
           2 
10
 tion, arose from the fact, that, in Trent, his  authority was less
 despotic than  in almost  any other  place.   Anxious to remove
 the Council to Bologna, where his  supremacy was absolute, he
 was not slow in contriving measures for the accomplishment of
 his purpose.   A fever  of a pestilential character was prevailing
 in Trent, at the time of the assembling of the Council.   Avail-
 ing himself of this circumstance,  the Pope caused it to be pro-
 claimed, that the disease was  contagious, and therefore danger-
 ous to  the health and lives of the fathers, whom  he had  called
 together, and for whose personal welfare, no less than their spir-
 itual, it was his duty to provide.   In this proclamation, he found
 no difficulty in inducing physicians and others to concur; bribery,
 and promises, and threats, united to  his own asserted infallibility,
 being the  arguments he used.  A Committee  of Inquiry, com-
 posed of prelates, was formed by  Cardinal Monte, an artful and
 distinguished ecclesiastic, who was  deep and  earnest in the in-
 terest of  his Holiness.   Before this right reverend and  venera-
 ble body, Fracastorius, Physician  to  the  Council,  and  many
 others,  being  solemnly  examined, testified to the correctness of
 the Pope's opinion, and the justness  of his fears for the assembled
 dignitaries of the church.   The consequence of  this manoeuvre
 was threefold;  the  Council was removed;  his Holiness gained
 his end; and the^ belief  in pestilential contagion was established
 by the  authority of the  church, which, at that period, was, by
 most  persons,  deemed  identical   with divine authority  !   Soon
 after this event, Lazarettos were built  and  systems  of  Quaran-
 tines established in  Naples, Leghorn, Marseilles, and other sea-
 ports of Europe, where no scheme of  the  kind had been pre-
 viously  thought of.   Thus, by a selfish juggle of a set of church-
 men, whose ignorance of the matter submitted to  them,  it would
 have  been difficult  to  increase, were  a medical  creed,  and a
 corresponding code  of  sanitary laws imposed on Christendom,
 which, by giving the stamp of sanctity  to error  and superstition'
have retarded  the progress of knowledge, destroyed millions of
human   lives,  wasted hundreds of  millions of  property,  and
produced,  through  other  channels, incalculable misery.  And,
as   already  mentioned,  the  scheme of  protection  then  de- 
11
vised, has descended, with  but little alteration, to the present
time.   It has been sustained by precedent and authority alone.
Truth and science have afforded it no support.  On the contra-
ry, it will appear, presently, that they are hostile to it.
   To exhibit somewhat of the extraordinary character of the
testimony, on the authority of which the right reverend Commit-
tee of Prelates assembled  in Trent,  ratified  the belief in pes-
tilential contagion, it may not  be  amiss to recite a few of the
facts that were submitted to them, by some  of the most enlight-
ened of the witnesses examined.   They were as follows:—
   " A fur or  leathern cap, worn thirty-five years previously, by
a person infected with pestilence, communicated  the disease to
twenty-five Germans, in Verona, and destroyed them all ! !  "
   " A feather bed, on which a pestilential subject had lain, on
being shaken up, seven years afterwards, in Wrateslaw, pro-
duced a plague, of which nine  thousand and five hundred per-
sons died ! "
   " A rag,  which had been  infected fourteen years  before, on
being thrown out of a window, sent its  plague-poison abroad,
and produced frightful mortality ! "
   "A  young man  introduced his hand  into a leathern  trunk,
which contained an infected cobweb, and was immediately attack-
ed by pestilence !  The web  inflicted a plague-sore on him, the
moment he touched it! "
   On the authority of these tales, and  many others  equally in-
credible, was a judgment passed, and a code of laws established,
which the accumulated experience and wisdom of centuries have
not yet set aside.  Nor are there wanting, even now, individuals of
distinction, who still endeavor to maintain their truth, and perpet-
uate their influence, by narratives  no  less extravagant and  futile
—the product of fiction and a  love of the marvellous.   In proof
of this, the following stories may be  added to those already re-
cited.
   A brother of Julien, one of  Napoleon's general officers, died
of plague in Egypt;  and we are seriously told, that  he caught
the contagion by taking a pinch of snuff from a box, out of
which one  had been taken some time  (not less, I think,  than a
week) previously by an infected soldier  ! 
12
  " A rag, which had been used  to  wash a  plague-sore, was
thrown into  the street.   Some  days afterwards, a hog  took it
into its mouth,  and went immediately into convulsions, and died
with glandular swellings!  "
  The two following stories  are  copied from a small volume,
lately published in London.   The  author of the work, a member
of the profession, of no common rank, gravely relates and firmly
believes them.
  " In Marseilles, long after a visitation of the plague had passed
away,  some  persons,  dragging  out of a close  corner,  ropes,
which it had been forgotten  were once  used  to bury the dead,
were attacked  by the  complaint; and, on  that  occasion,  ten
thousand persons died."
  " At Venice, a blanket belonging to a person who had died of
the  plague, seven years before, reproduced the disease." To these,
hundreds of other fantasies of a  similar cast might be  subjoined;
but, for the credit of the profession, I shall pass them by.
  Were the question proposed to  me, " Is  all the evidence, al-
leged in  proof of pestilential contagion, equally frivolous with
that just recited ?." I would reply, that, although it is not all quite
so  extravagant  and repulsive of  belief, it is no less unsubstantial
and insufficient to sustain the hypothesis built on it.   The  reason
of  this  is plain.    It is obtained by a process fallacious in it-
self; and, therefore, not only unfit to minister to truth, but actually
hostile to it.   To speak more clearly and pointedly:
   The evidence adduced in proof of pestilential contagiousness
has usually too broad and  deep a dash of the marvellous in it.
It is, moreover,  mostly  second-hand tattle—no  better than  ru-
mor—something that every body has heard, but which nobody
has seen.  In these respects, it closely resembles witch, ghost,
and goblin stories.  Nor is the  worst  yet told.  In too many
instances, the evidence is furished by interested witnesses—per-
sons who hold offices and employments, founded on a belief in the
contagiousness of plague, and other forms of pestilential disease.
In  no instance, within my knowledge, is it the  result of accurate
observation and  research, or cautious  experiment.   It is not  a
little singular, that no well-devised plan of inquiry has been insti- 
•
                             13

tuted to  settle the question.   All has  been  hitherto trusted to
chance,  tale-telling, and credulity; a course  which  can never
lead to truth,  on  any subject,  except as the result  of accident.
Such, I  mean, has been the practice of  the  contagionists.   If,
in this charge, I  do  them wrong,  it is unintentional; and I shall
be gratified at being corrected by an adduction of facts, showing
that they have, in any case, investigated  the subject in a philo-
sophical manner.  It will appear, hereafter,  that the non-conta-
gionists have sought for  evidence  in a different way.
   True; in the year 1819, a feint was made to inquire regularly
into the  validity of the hypothesis of pestilential contagiousness;
but it was  only a feint  in fact, whatever it might have been in
design.  The inquiry, moreover, as  far as  it extended, (if, in-
deed, it  could be called an inquiry, and  not a mockery,) was
conducted so  inefficiently, not to  say unfairly, that  it could not
fail to prove fruitless, if not deceptions.   My allusion is to the
proceeding of the British Parliament, in the year just specified.
   A select Committee was appointed by the House of Commons,
with  instructions  to inquire, whether the plague be contagious or
not ?  But the commission was  executed in a way reprehensibly
partial, and therefore unsatisfactory.   An  investigation more su-
perficial  and inconclusive than that held  under  the direction of
the assembled  wisdom  of the  British  empire, can scarcely  be
imagined.   Almost all the medical characters examined on the
occasion, were members of the College of Physicians,  of Lon-
don, scarcely one of whom had ever seen a single case of plague,
much less  witnessed  an  epidemic prevalence  of  it.  All the
knowledge  they  possessed on  the subject,  was derived from
conversation, letters, and books,—the latter belonging almost ex-
clusively to the school  of contagion.  Their testimony, there-
fore,  was in favor of the contagiousness  of  the complaint, and
was marked by an abundance of fancy and fiction.   The  result
chiefly of hearsay and book-learning, unsubstantiated by obser-
vation or experiment: it was little else  than  a second edition of
that submitted to  the Committee  of the Council of  Trent.  It,
of course, left the subject of research as it found it,  enveloped
in the ignorance,  and entangled in  the errors of the fourteenth
century. 
14
   At the time of this mock inquiry, London, and other parts of
 Great Britain, contained many able and  enlightened physicians,
 who, having visited Egypt, and the countries of the Levant, had
 practised in plague, and become familiar with its history, means
 of propagation, and general character, from observation and  ex-
 perience.  They were  the very men, therefore, whose testimony
 alone was worthy of credit.   Yet few, if any of them, were  ex-
 amined.   Why ?  Because  it  was know that  their  evidence
 would be subversive of the hypothesis, which  the  examining
 Committee were determined  to sustain.  For it  was no secret,
 that the settled purpose of that body was, to support,  at all haz-
 ards, the  long-cherished doctrine of the British government—
 that plague is contagious.  Had no  resolution of this sort exist-
 ed,—but, had truth alone been the object of research, physicians,
 who had seen and contended  with plague,  would have been  ea-
 gerly examined, and their testimony preferred to that of those,
 whose information had been collected from books.   This asser-
 tion is too obvious and  well-founded, to  be held  doubtful.   To
 allege, as was done, that the  members of the  College  of Physi-
 cians, were men of more years and experience,  and  of higher
 standing in their profession, than the others,  was but an artifice
 of party, as  shallow as  it was disingenuous.  The accumulation
 of knowledge  is not always in proportion to that of years.  And
 the experience of those, who have seen plague, can scarcely fail
 to be more mature and instructive, as respects that disease, than
 the experience of those that are strangers to it.  Nor is the
 " standing " of a physician, according to the usual interpretation
 of that word,  an infallible indication either  of his disposition to
inquire, or  his capacity to judge.   Physicians  of the highest
standing, as  to the extent of  their practice, are  often  but very
ordinary students of nature, and  explorers of causes.   Nor is
this all.   Old men are too much inclined  to adhere to old errors  •
while younger men are  usually the discoverers  of new truths.
In fine—the  Committee  must have been influenced by some mo-
tive other than a sincere desire to elicit and diffuse correct  in-
formation  on the matter referred to  them ;  else  their  proceed-
ing would have been exceedingly different from what it  was.
They were men of too  much  sagacity and  penetration, not to 
15
know, that the course they pursued was incompetent to the  so-
lution of the important problem submitted  to their examination.
The result of that parliamentary farce must be regarded as hav-
ing given a sort of state-sanction to the hypothesis of pestilential
contagion.  It exhibits,  moreover, a striking  example  of  the
mischief a public body rarely fails to do, when it interferes with
a subject which it does not understand.  I have never  known a
legislature to  avoid gross blunders, when framing  laws  about
pestilential diseases.  Nor  can the  case  be otherwise, until a
new course of proceeding shall be adopted.  When  legislators,
as too often happens, have no sound and practical acquaintance
with the matter to be deliberated and acted on, they should avail
themselves of the  knowledge of those that have.  If  this be
done in the true spirit, and to the requisite extent, the issue may
be  salutary; but, if it be neglected,  from  motives of obstinacy
and self-sufficiency, the avoidance of mischief is scarcely possible.
   Nearly a  hundred years previously, the British government
had lent its authority, to give weight and  popularity to the  hy-
pothesis of  contagion.   In the year 1720, the  plague  visited
Marseilles, with a degree of violence and devastation, that  dis-
mayed  all Europe, especially Great Britain, whose commerce
with that city was  extensive.   Alarmed  at  the calamity which
seemed to threaten them, the Ministers  of the  Crown directed
Dr. Mead, the Court Physician, not to inquire  into  the conta-
giousness of plague, (of that they did not doubt) but to prepare
and report to them  a set of  rules and regulations, to exclude it
from the  kingdom.  In  complying  with this order, the doctor,
who possessed both talents and learning, united to an inordinate
fondness  for  theory and  discussion, did  not confine himself to
matters merely practical.   He speculated  extensively on pesti-
lential contagion, and, in a particular manner, went into an elab-
orate defence  of the communicabihty of plague, from one country
to  another,  by  means of commerce.  As, from his eminence
and abundant knowledge,  no less than from the zeal  with which
he  engaged  in the enterprize, he may be supposed to have vin-
dicated his position, by the strongest arguments the  case admit-
ted, it may not be  amiss, on the present occasion, to test the
validity of his defence, by a brief review of it.   This step is  the 
16
more necessary, in consideration of the  fact, that Dr. Mead's
Treatise is referred to, even  now, as  indisputable  authority, on
pestilential contagion.  The  following are some of our author's
most prominent arguments, in proof of the conveyance of plague
from one country to another,  by travelling and commerce.
   " The first instance," says our author, "I shall mention, shall
be of the entrance of the plague  into Rome, in the year 1656,
which we are assured was conveyed thither  from Naples, by
clothes,  and other wares  from that place, brought  first  to  Port
Neptune, and carried  from thence to the neighboring castle  of
St. Lawrence; which, after having been kept some time there,
were conveyed to  Rome."   p. 254.
   On  this passage, I shall  simply remark, that a  more vague,
inconclusive, narrative was never penned.  Fairly interpreted,
it amounts  to this.  At  some period of a certain year, nearly
three centuries ago, in some articles, by some body, as  some one
says, the contagion  of  plague was  conveyed  by  a circuitous
route, injuring no one  during  its passage, though it  remained
" some time " at the " castle of St. Lawrence."   In this unac-
countable manner, was  the poison  of plague  transported from
Naples to Rome!  Nor is this a bad specimen of all the reputed
facts adduced by contagionists,  to prove the communicabihty of
plague, from one  place  to another, whether distant or near, by
clothes  and  merchandise.  How wretched  must be the condi-
tion  of a theory, when such trash is resorted to in support of it!
It  is virtually self-refuted.  But, to proceed with Dr. Mead's
evidence:
   "  A very remarkable  story, lately communicated to  me by a
person  of undoubted  credit,  is too much  to the purpose  to be
here omitted.  In the year 1726, an English ship took in goods
at  Grand Cairo, in the time  of  the  plague's raging there, and
carried them to Alexandria.   Upon opening one of the bales  of
wool in a field, two Turks, employed  in  the work, were imme-
diately killed, and some birds,  that happened to fly over the place,
dropped  down dead ! " p. 268.
  "  In the island of Bermudas, about the year, 1695, as the ac-
count was given me by the learned Dr. Halley, a sack of cotton
was  put  on shore by stealth, and lay above  a month, without any 
17
prejudice  to the people  of the house  where  it was hid;  but,
when it came to be distributed among the inhabitants, it carried
such a contagion along with it, that the living scarce sufficed to
bury the dead.   This relation  Br. Halley received  from Capt.
Tucker, of Bermudas." p. 269.
   " Alexander  Benedictus gives  a very  distinct relation  of a
feaiher-bed, that was laid by seven years, on suspicion of  its be-
ing infected, which produced  mischievous effects at the  end of
that great length of time.   And Sir Theodore Mayerne relates,
that some  clothes,  fouled with blood  and matter from plague-
sores, being lodged between matting and the  wall of a house, in
Paris, gave the  plague, several years  afterwards,  to a workman
who  took  them out,  which  presently  spread  throughout  the
city."  p. 270.
   " Two  hogs, finding, in the  streets of Florence,  the  rags
which had been thrown out from off a poor man dead of plague,
after snuffling upon them, and tearing  them with their teeth, fell
into convulsions, and died  in less than  an hour !  "   p. 266.
   Many other scraps of intelligence, equally valuable, but none,
perhaps,  more  so—are contained in  our author's  Treatise on
contagion.  But the reader might well think me trifling with him,
were I to trouble him any  further with matter so fabulous.   He
will  not fail  to observe,  that, as  heretofore stated, every fact
and narrative are given at  second or  third hand.   The  author
saio nothing himself, but received and reported every thing on
hearsay.   And  so strong was his credulity, and  so thoroughly
was his mind  made up on the  subject, that  he appears to have
been incapable of questioning or doubting.  In his  view of the
matter, every narrator, though a mere  minister  of rumor, was a
person of unimpeachable veracity, and well-tried accuracy.   Yet
it is much to be lamented, that it is scarcely possible to  find an
accurate reporter of any thing extraordinary.  In  proof of this,
two persons seldom  report alike on the same point.  The truth
is, that, as just intimated, so strong was  our author's wedded-
ness to a belief in the contagion and  extraordinary  communica-
bihty of plague, that he seems to have been incapable of analyzing
strictly, and judging dispassionately of evidence  respecting them.
              3 
18
His powers of discrimination being blended, and  his will to ex-
amine  subverted by credulity, he believed every  thing that min-
istered  to  his  favorite  opinion.   The testimony on which he
relies,  for the establishment  of his hypothesis, is, in no  degree,
more valid, than that which can be adduced  in  proof of ghosts
being seen in church-yards, fairies dancing  on greens  and hair-
bells, and witches riding on broom-sticks, and sailing in egg-shells!
Were  it not for the mischief it has already done,  and may, for a
time,  continue to do, the doctor's whole  discussion  of pestilen-
tial contagion is too trivial to be  seriously considered.    But  for
this  reason, I  should  deem  myself as usefully  employed, in a
grave attempt  at a refutation of a belief in necromancy or the
second  sight.   Yet  is  the  work  I  am examining considered
the ablest   that has  appeared  on  the  subject   of  which   it
treats.   It  is,  therefore, more frequently referred to, and more
implicitly relied  on as authority, than any  other.   It might be
called  the Alcoran of contagionists; and, for more  than a century,
has been  almost  as servilely confided in by them, as  are the
writings of the prophet, by the most faithful of his followers.
Nor are the stories it  contains, much  less  miraculous.    In evi-
dence  of its unparalleled popularity, it passed through seven large
editions, within one year after its first publication.  No wonder,
therefore, that it has done much to  rivet in  the  human   mind a
belief in the contagiousness of pestilential complaints.
   Dr. Mead has availed himself of every practicable source of in-
formation favorable to his views, and  tasked his powers to the
highest pitch, in his attempt to prove, that the plague was im-
ported  into  Marseilles, in  1720, in a  cargo  of goods  from  the
Levant.  Yet, in this  effort, he has been, if possible, even more
unsuccessful than  in either of his others, because  he has virtually
refuted himself.   He admits that, before the arrival  of the sus-
pected goods,  there prevailed, " in Marseilles, a  fever of extra-
ordinary malignity, such as is commonly called pestilential."  And
he further  admits, that, " in an  instance  or  two, that  fever was
attended with eruptions bearing some resemblance  to the plague."
Still he contends that it was not plague, but a pestilential fever,
essentially  different.    When he  attempts,  however, to show 
19
 wherein the difference consists, he entirely fails.   The reason is
 plain.   There was no difference, except in degree.   What he
 calls "pestilential fever," was immature plague.   As  the season
 advanced, and the heat increased, it gradually ripened;  and, about
 the time of the arrival of the Levant vessel, its form and charac-
 ter became  complete.  It was then true plague,  and  was so ac-
 knowledged by every one; whereas  those, who had  previously
 called it plague, and predicted that it would soon  throw off its
 mask, and assume a less equivocal shape, had been laughed at as
 visionaries,  or denounced as alarmists.
   Such are the circumstances that attend an eruption  of plague,
 almost universally.   It is ushered in by  a " pestilential fever ; '
 that complaint being but a lower grade of itself ;  precisely as the
 dawn ushers in the day.   Nor would it be more preposterous, to
 declare the  faint light of  morning essentially  different from the
 full light of  day, than to contend for a radical difference between
 the precursory pestilential fever, and the subsequent plague.
   The Great  Plague, that devastated London, in 1665, and every
 other, that has prevailed in that city, to any extent, was preceded
 by a pestilential fever.  So was the celebrated plague of Moscow,
 as well as those of Paris,  Lyons,  Milan,  Rome,  and other cities
 and towns of  France and  Italy, as might be easily  shown, did
 time  and the  occasion permit me to adduce the evidence that is
 accessible.   So were the noted plagues of Aleppo,  as recorded
 by the two Russells.   Even in  Constantinople and Grand Cairo,
 the severest plagues are uniformly preceded by malignant fevers.
 Such is the  unvarying course of things.   Nor did Marseilles ex-
 hibit an exception to it.   The fact, moreover, is easily  explained.
 Plague is an  atmospherical disease.  But the atmosphere  does
 not pass at once into  the  condition necessary to its production.
 It ripens for the purpose  gradually, and therefore requires time.
 Under its first degree  of vitiation, it generates fevers of  a common
 character, under its next, pestilential ones, and  ultimately  true
 plague.
   Of yellow fever, which is but a modification of plague, or at
least a complaint very closely allied to it, the  same is true.  It
is preceded, in the places it invades, by febrile affections of in- 
20
ordinate severity,   The history of that disease, as it appeared in
New York, Pliladelphia, and Baltimore, at the close of the last,
and the beginning  of the  present century, testifies  to this.  It
visited those cities,  with  more  or less malignity, almost every
year, from  1793,  until 1805—five or  six times with  great  mor-
tality.  And if, during that period, febrile complaints were un-
usually malignant,  in May,  June, and July, or  either of those
months, yellow  fever  was looked for  in August or  September.
Nor did it fail to appear, unless prevented  by a favorable change
in the character of the weather.  The explanation  of  this un-
varying course of things was easy to every one,  except  contagion-
ists, who, as light  on the subject increased, and reason gained an
ascendency over prejudice, declined  rapidly  in number.  The
fevers of the early summer months were  but  lighter  grades  of
yellow fever, which appeared in full maturity and strength, at a
subsequent period.
   Such, I  repeat,  is the true  explanation  of the occurrences in
Marseilles, in 1720.   And the  contrary belief, asserted by Dr.
Mead, and attempted to be  proved, by evidence so insufficient,
would surprise me, were it not that  the  doctor was an ultra-
theorist.  No writer of the time, nor  indeed of any   time, sur-
passed him in  the visionary  character  of his  speculations  On
disease.   Witness  his  singular  descants   on the complaints  of
Saul, Jehoram, Hezekiah,  Nebuchadnezzar, Judas,  and Herod,
respecting which we can do nothing more than frame conjectures,
and that to no  useful purpose,  or  satisfactory result.    Nor are
his chapters on Demoniacs, and the diseases of old age  any bet-
ter.   Here again the discussion is unsubstantial and useless.  If
it be  pronounced even curious, there its praise must end.   Yet,
redundant  as he was  in intellectual extravagances, not to say
frivolities,  Dr.  Mead has done more, from his  high and fashion-
able reputation, and the aid he derived from the British  Govern-
ment, to fasten on the human  mind  the hypothesis of  pestilential
contagiousness, and the necessity of Quarantines, than any other
physician, with whose history I am acquainted—I believe I might
say,  than any other that has lived.   But the sceptre is falling from
the hands of his followers, and will soon be transferred to the an- 
21
ticontagionists.  The fate of his dominion in medicine resembles
that of the  power of emperors and kings, which  is  passing into
the hands of those,  who once considered it of divine origin, and
therefore not to be  resisted.   The contagionists of  latter  times
have done nothing to  prevent, and but little to retard this issue
of the contest.   They have added nothing valuable  to the stock
left them by their predecessors, and  have therefore proved noth-
ing which they found wanting proof.  They have dealt in asser-
tions, surmises, and  rumors, but not  in facts and fair research.
In acting thus, they consume their time, and waste  their powers
to no purpose.   The  evidence they affect to adduce  does not
suit this plain,  observing,  matter-of-fact period  of the  world.
Several nations have exchanged poetry and fiction for philosophy
and common sense.  And the latter are intolerant of the fancies
and  dreams of Mead and his disciples.  Visions of every de-
scription (the notions  I am combating not excepted) are chiefly
the product of night and  darkness.  The  light of day dissipates
them.  And,  as respects  the subject under discussion, that light
is now opening.  Conjecture and hypothesis, therefore, must be
no further  palmed,  as truth, on those who  are  beginning to look
and  think for themselves.   Nor will the authority of man be any
longer received, as a suitable substitute for  that of nature; much
 less will it be admitted in opposition to  it.  Hence the days  of
 the belief  in  pestilential  contagion, and of all  institutions and
practices growing out of it, are numbered; and appearances in-
dicate that they will not be protracted.   That they have continued
 so long, under the  sanction of  so flimsy an hypothesis, is ascri-
 bable to circumstances already stated in  general terms, but which
 no longer  exist in their original  strength.   Those circumstances
maybe summed up more definitely,  under the following heads:—
   1.   The ignorance, prejudice, and superstition of the world,
 at the time when the  belief in pestilential contagion took  pos-
 session of the  public mind.   This was  an  intellectual condition
 peculiarly favorable for erecting and maintaining any hypothesis,
 however absurd, under the sanction of high authority.   Inferiors
 believed what their superiors dictated to them, and looked to  no
 higher source of information.   It rarely occurred  to them that 
22
 they should consult nature, as a fountain of truth.   They were
 even told, by some of their instructers, whom they regarded as
 oracles in knowledge, and patterns in piety, that nature was cor-
 rupt and  fallacious, and, if confided in  and  followed, would mis-
 lead and  ruin them.   Thus were they blinded  by ignorance, and
 duped by error, under the ministry of artful and ambitious eccle-
 siastics.  In the midst of the sinister influence of such  causes,
 and on the authority  of men unacquainted with nature, and  ac-
 tuated chiefly by the lust of power,  and the love of wealth, was
 the hypothesis I am examining originally founded.   But the fruit
 must be  assimilated to the tree  that produces  it,  and the stream
 lo  the fountain from  which  it flows.   No wonder, then, that the
 notions of the fourteenth century, a period of entire darkness, as
 respects physical science, cannot bear the scrutiny of the nine-
 teenth, when that branch of knowledge is successfully cultivated.
   2.  The stratagem of Paul III, at  the date of the  Council  of
 Trent, which threw into the scale of  the hypothesis in question,
 the  entire weight of the Catholic church.   That event not only
 strengthened the notion of contagion, by what w7as considered in-
 fallible testimony ;  it imbued it with a supposed spirit of sanctity
 and truth, which it  was heresy to dispute.   Its adoption became
 a Christian duty, and its rejection a dangerous  crime.  Even to
 doubt it,  was to  question the infallibility of his holiness—an act
 which might bring down on its  author ecclesiastical vengeance,
 and consign him to a dungeon, if not to the grave.   Nor is this
 all.  Lazarettos, the product of the hypothesis  of contagion,
 were placed originally under the management of the clergy, and
 so (continued,  for more than two centuries.   During that period,
 the directors  and governors  of those  institutions, as  rapacious as
 they were bigoted, enriched themselves and the cardinals, who
 procured  them their appointments, and, no  doubt, the Pope him-
 self, by the suspected merchandise and other property placed in
their hands, for purification and  protection.   Thus had the  Dig-
 nitaries of the church two of the strongest motives, that actuate
the human mind—the love of power,  and the love  of wealth—to
 induce them to perpetuate the belief in contagion.
   3.   The sanction given to the hypothesis, by the British Gov-
 ernment, in 1720, through the writings of Dr. Mead.   As already 
23
mentioned, those writings have been ever since the text-book of
Lazaretto and Quarantine-mongers, throughout Christendom—
our own  country, I regret to say, not excepted.
  4.   A second sanction, by  the same  Government,  in  1819,
through the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons.
The influence of this act was much feebler than that of the pro-
ceedings of 1720, because the world had begun to look  at things
somewhat as  they are, and to think for itself, much more than it
did a hundred years before.   The manoeuvre, however, no less
dishonest, than that of  Pope Paul, did something towards prop-
ping up, a little longer,  a tottering hypothesis.
   5.   The influence of all the officers of Lazaretto and Quarantine
establishments in Christendom,   This has, of course, been uni-
formly exercised, in  support  of the hypothesis, which  gives the
possessors of it  their subsistence.   Nor is it  feeble.   However
ignorant these officers may be, in other matters, they have always
had the  credit of knowing,  from  experience, every thing  con-
nected with  a Lazaretto—the contagiousness of  pestilence not
excepted.   To their own personal and official  influence, add that
of their  dependants and friends, and the two  united is powerful.
   6.  The pride of opinion  often expressed; the prejudice  of
education; the force  of long-continued habits, the  reluctance  of
 most persons to  abandon old theories, and frame and support new
 ones,  merely on account of the trouble it gives them; the facility
 of adopting the opinions of men, contrasted with the difficulty of
 scrutinizing the laws  of nature, and drawing information from that
 source; and, last, though not least,  the sway of fashion, which is
 almost as despotic in matters of belief, as in forms  of dress—and
 to believe in the contagiousness of plague has  been  fashionable
 for centuries.  These  several motives,  each  of them  strong in
 itself, have concurred in  perpetuating  the notion of contagion.
    Such is the general union of causes, which has sustained this
 delusion, from age to age, notwithstanding the increase of know-
 ledge calculated to destroy it.   Yet,  multiplex as that union  is,
 fact and fair  reasoning make no part of it.   It is a repulsive com-
 pound of  ignorance  and error, prejudice and superstition,  the
 love of gain, and the love of power.   It is  an  incorporation of 
24
the same elements, that have given origin  and  continuance to
the hypothesis of papal infallibility, the miraculous power of the
relics of saints, and the divine right of kings to  trample on their
subjects ; and those four delusions,  which have,  for hundreds of
years, fettered the human mind, and repressed  its energies, de-
graded our race, and produced mischief and misery, beyond cal-
culation, are destined to be dissipated  alike, by the development
of moral and physical truth.  And when popes and potentates of
every description, shall be  no longer regarded as more than mere
men, nor saintly relics than fragments  of inert matter, then will
be rejected the notion, no less empty and untenable, that the con-
tagion of plague can  be carried in a fur cap, a lock of hair,  a
bundle of wool  or cotton,  or  a  lady's glove,  from  country to
country, and spread disease and death  among the inhabitants.
   I am aware that I may be suspected of intending, by the fore-
going remarks, to attach undue discredit to the  hypothesis I am
opposing.   It may be even imagined, that I am desirous of sink-
ing it deeper in disrepute, than I myself think it deserves.   Such,
however, is not the fact.  After deliberately investigating the sub-
ject, through every channel by which  I could approach it,  and
by every means  I could bring to  bear  on it, I  avow my  stead-
fast belief of all I have  said.  And,  though  far  from boasting of
either my powers or attainments, which I know to be sufficiently
humble and limited, yet, confident of the truth of the views just
stated, I challenge all believers in the  contagiousness of plague,
to put me in the wrong, by adducing a single pertinent and well-
substantiated fact, in support of their hypothesis.   With surmises,
equivocal stories, and  bold assertions,  their writings  abound.
But, in scientific investigations,  such  evidence  is inadmissible.
It is, in truth, inadmissible every where, because it is  no evi-
dence at all.   Facts alone, stript of every  thing,  whether of
color or shape, that may render them  deceptive, are admissible
in the researches of the present  period.  And  none such have
the advocates of pestilential contagion yet presented, to sustain
their notions.  All of that description  are opposed to them.
   Shall I be called on  to prove  that  plague is  not contagious?
That would be unreasonable, and contrary to the rules of sound 
25
logic ; a negative being insusceptible of proof.   A mere  denial,
on the negative side,  is  sufficient,  until actual proof is  offered,
on the positive.   The criminal, on trial, is  held  innocent,  until
he is proved guilty.   And the testimony he offers, in his defence,
is intended chiefly to show the insufficiency, or the evil intention
of that brought against him.  To prove positively that he  did not
commit the crime, with which he is charged, is usually impossible;
although he may show to the reasonable satisfaction of every one
that he  did not.   The ground of his acquittal, therefore,  is, that
his commission of it is not proved.
   In  like manner might I proclaim the non-contagiousness of
plague established, until  that of its  contagiousness be made defi-
nitively to appear.  Nor would  the  expedient  be a violation of
the rules  of discussion.   Of this privilege, however, I shall not
avail myself.  To take shelter behind a technical covering,  or to
use any artifice, to secure victory, or avoid defeat, would be un-
worthy of the cause I am endeavoring to sustain.   That the con-
test, therefore, may be  perfectly  fair,  I shall state briefly my
chief reasons, for denying that plague is a contagious disease.
   To prevent all misinterpretation of the terms to be used, I shall
here premise, that, by the matter of contagion, without which no
complaint is communicable from the sick to the  well, I  mean a
poison secreted,  by morbid action  in one body, capable of pro-
ducing  a similar kind of  action  in  another.   To be contagious
therefore, a disease must be directly productive of such a poison.
It is not sufficient that  the secreted matter turn to poison, by
chemical changes, after  its elimination  from  the bodies of the
sick.   The poison must be formed  by  diseased vital action, and
possess its virulent qualities, at the time of its formation and dis-
charge from the system.   Is a virus of this description generated
by plague, in the manner here stated?  The negative of this  ques-
tion seems to be established, by the following  considerations.
   1.   The  strict analogy, in all material points,  between plague
and yellow fever, the latter  of which no one now  considers con-
tagious.   Though that analogy  will  be  frequently brought  into
view, in the course of my  remarks,  it is matter of regret to me,
that the limits, within which I  must confine this  essay,  do not
             4 
26
permit me to give a detailed view of it.  I shall only further ob-
serve of it,  at present, that it is so  complete,"as  to show satis-
factorily, that the two forms of disease (plague and yellow fever)
are but modifications  of each other,  having a  common  origin.
It is important to add, that the hypothesis of the contagiousness
of yellow fever has, within the  last  forty years, passed through
the same inquisition, which the  contagiousness  of plague is un-
dergoing at  present.   And the  issue is known.  With all com-
petent judges, the decision is against the contagious nature of the
former complaint.   No one of intelligence,  who has thoroughly
investigated the subject,  now  believes  in it.   Yet, when that
disease appeared in Philadelphia, in 1793, the case was  far other-
wise.   The belief in its contagiousness was much more  confident
and general, than is that in the  contagiousness of plague, at the
present period.  And had yellow fever  prevailed only  at a dis-
tance, among an ignorant  people, not  qualified, or disinclined to
scrutinize severely its cause and mode of propagation  (as is the
case with plague) its  contagiousness now would  be  generally
maintained.   But, by the  industry and discernment of American
physicians,  light was  thrown on the  subject,  and the delusion
vanished.    I have said, "American  physicians;"  for to  them
belongs the  merit of the work.   If other physicians joined  in it,
it was  not until an advanced  period of the contest.   The  labor
and heat of the day were borne, and the task achieved,  by the
Faculty of the United States.   And a  glorious task it was.   To
the civilized world, it was the day-spring of hope, as respects their
emancipation from the fallacy of a belief in pestilential contagion3
and the thraldom of Quarantines, with their  empty  mummeries,
and immeasurable mischief.   I repeat, that the notion of the con-
tagious nature of plague is now undergoing a slow but regular ex-
amination; and the  issue  will be its extinction, as  a groundless
superstition in medicine.   A certain pledge of this is, its progres-
sive loss of popularity and advocates, in proportion to the increase
of knowledge respecting it.   Were the opportunity moreover for
scrutinizing  it as favorable, as was that for inquiring into the con-
tagiousness of yellow fever,  it   would soon  cease  to encumber
science, and mislead the unthinking.   But difficulties exist, which 
27
will protract its  duration.  Two recent occurrences,  however,
can scarcely fail to lessen those difficulties.  The first, and per-
haps the most important of these is, the establishment of a school
of medicine in Egpyt, and the general reform, as to  science and
art, which the Pacha is introducing into that country.   The other
is, the opening of a free intercourse  between the United States
and the Sublime Porte.  American physicians will now settle in
Constantinople, examine plague, as they have done yellow fever,
and show it to be non-contagious.   In Grand Cairo, and Alex-
andria, the same work will be performed, and the same services
rendered to the world, by physicians from Europe and the United
States.   This great enterprize, so important to man,  is now in
progress, and, I doubt not, will be completed, before the middle
of the present century.
   2.   Within the last forty years, during which period medicine
has assumed much more of  the character of an exact science,
than  it had held  previously, every well-conducted  inquiry into
the hypothesis of pestilential contagion has proved unfavorable to
it.   By disclosing new ground of dissatisfaction with it, it has
never failed to diminish the  number  and zeal of its  friends,  and
increase those of its opponents.  Witness  the  investigation by
Napoleon's Medical Staff in Egypt,  especially by his physician
and surgeon in chief, Desgenettes and Assalini.  Those enlight-
ened and enterprizing officers were believers in  the contagious-
ness  of plague, when they entered Egypt, and disbelievers when
they  left it.   Why?  Because their opinion, founded at first, on
rumor and reading, was now the result of observation and  expe-
rience.   The latter sources of information therefore had dissipated
the delusions  of the former.   This is history.
   Of the inquiry into the contagion  of  the  pestilential  fever of
Gibraltar, in  1814, the  same is true.   The decision was,  that
the complaint was not contagious.   On the pestilential complaints
which have prevailed, during the present  century, in Spain, the
most enlightened physicians, who examined  them, passed  a sim-
ilar  opinion : they  pronounced them  non-contagious.   As  re-
lates to cholera,  the  same may  be affirmed.  On the first erup-
tion of that  pestilence in Asia, and for years  afterwards, the 
28
civilized world trembled no less at its supposed contagion,  than
its unprecedented  malignity.  But several  distinguished physi-
cians, who had been observers of it,  from its  commencement,
became satisfied, at length, that it was not contagious; and, in
its passage through Europe and America,  the correctness of that
opinion has been fully confirmed.   Among intelligent physicians,
who have seen much of  cholera, and been observant of its  rise,
progress,  and  termination,  the disbelievers in  its contagiousness
are, to their opponents, as a hundred to one—perhaps more.   In
the United States, I know not a single physician of eminence,
who, having seen it and  practised  in it extensively, now main-
tains its contagious quality.   If some did so, at first, it was be-
cause the disease had not then been sufficiently scrutinized by them.
Yet I venture  to say, that the phenomena of cholera are  as favor-
able to the hypothesis of contagion,  as  those  of plague.   And
were the latter complaint to sweep over Europe and the United
States,  as the former has done, the notion of its contagiousness
would  be  refuted  and  abandoned.   I need scarcely  add, that
when the  advocates of an opinion decline  in number, in propor-
tion to the increase of knowledge on the  subject of it,  that cir-
cumstance alone proclaims it untrue, and  forewarns of its  fate.
A contested truth gains proselytes, as it becomes  better under-
stood.
  3.   A real  poison produces  its  deleterious effects on the hu-
man system, at all times, in all  places, and under every imagina-
ble variety of circumstances.   This is true, whether the poison
be morbid or natural, animal, vegetable, or mineral, solid, liquid,
or aeriform.   Arsenic, the virus of the rattle-snake, and  the juice
of the mountain laurel do not poison alone in  any  particular place,
at any particular season of the year, or under any given degree
of temperature, humidity, or  purity, of the  atmosphere.  They
injure or destroy with equal certainty, in the city and the country,
the plain and the valley,  the dry ground and the morass, on the
hill-top and the mountain, in an arid atmosphere and a moist one,
and during winter and spring, as certainly as during summer and
autumn.   Of the virus of small-pox, and that of Lues  Venerea,
the same is true.   But,  as respects the  supposed contagion  of 
29
plague, the case is otherwise.   It  produces disease ofily during
certain seasons of the  year, in particular places, and  under pe-
culiar conditions of the atmosphere.   Hence, in Constantinople,
Smyrna, and other parts of Europe and Asia, the plague ceases
on the approach of winter, and, in Egypt, when the heat of sum-
mer and  the aridity of the earth and the atmosphere have attained
their height.   Nor does it ever prevail, in the latter country, when
the land  is flooded by the waters  of the Nile.  Yet we are assur-
ed, that  the contagion of the disease  remains in  Grand Cairo,
Constantinople, Alexandria, and elsewhere, concealed in bedding,
wearing  apparel,  and  merchandise,  throughout the year.  Why
then does it not produce disease?  Because, say the contagionists,
a suitable condition of the atmosphere  is wanting.   This allega-
tion, though unworthy of a reply, shall receive one hereafter, that
those who resort to it may not  deem  it unanswerable.   Physi-
cians, and all  other persons familiar  with the history of the  two
complaints, cannot fail to observe, that, in the several points re-
ferred to, under this head, plague and yellow fever are not merely
analogous, but may be pronounced identical.
   4.  Plague bears no resemblance to a contagious disease, in
either its commencement,  progress,  or termination.   It  begins
without  any known communication with infected persons, cloth-
ing, or merchandise,  spreads irregularly but  rapidly, and  disap-
pears at the time, and under the  circumstances most favorable to
its further  propagation, were it actually contagious.   To  be ex-
plicit on these points, which are  vitally important, in the present
discussion.
   Small-pox is a truly contagious disease, and usually spreads by its
virus alone, being rarely epidemic.  It moreover far surpasses the
plague in the  certainty with which it is communicated, as appears
from the fact, that fewer persons exposed to it escape an attack.
The calculation is, that not more than one in, I think, about seven
thousand, can be fairly exposed to the contagion of small-pox, with
impunity; while plague passes by a large  proportion of persons,
under a like exposure, without injuring them.  Yet plague spreads
through a city or country  with tenfold the rapidity of small-pox.
 The latter complaint  requires perhaps a year, to pervade an en- 
30
tire city or town, which the former overruns in a  single month.
The reason is plain.  Small-pox cannot  spread, unless the well
contract it, by  coming  within the immediate atmosphere of the
sick,  their bedding or  clothing, or some other article that has
been  about their  persons.   All this may be avoided.  But the
case is different,  with respect to plague,  as  will be made  to ap-
pear, and be explained more fully  hereafter.   To  contract it, no
approach to the persons of the sick, or to any thing that has  been
near them, is requisite.  It comes to individuals, instead of their
going to it.
   Small-pox again  spreads, with regularity, from  person to per-
son, family to family, and neighborhood to neighborhood, accord-
ing to the time and proximity of exposure.   The nearest suffer
first, while the more distant escape, until a later period.   Very
different is the manner of the spreading of plague.  That malady,
in its irregular progress, passes over not only individuals  and
families most  exposed, without attacking them, but  leaps  over
whole adjoining  neighborhoods, and lights on remoter ones.  It
then often returns and scourges those it had spared.   In  these
several points, again, it is identical with yellow fever.
   Nor are the two maladies less similar in the mode of their ter-
mination, which is usually  abrupt; while that of small-pox  is as
gradual as its commencement.   In  temperate latitudes, plague be-
gins in June, July, or August, according to the character of the
season,  and ends in November, or  early in December.   So  does
yellow fever.  When plague first  appears, the cases  are few in
number, and its  supposed matter  of contagion  correspondingly
small in quantity.   As the cases increase in number, so, of course,
does the supposed matter of contagion  in amount; and in  pro-
portion to that amount, at any given time, must be its power to
spread the disease.   This may be  termed an axiom.  When the
complaint, therefore,  is at its  height, its  capacity to spread must
be greatest.   But, when it begins  to decline in November  (and
its decline is,  for the  most part, very rapid)  the number of its
cases, in a large  city—say Constantinople or  Grand Cairo—is a
hundred-fold greater, than it was, when it first broke out, in June
or July.   Its supposed matter of contagion  is, of course, in an 
31
equal degree more abundant.   Why then does the disease  sud-
denly disappear, its quantity of poison and means of propagating
itself being still so great?  \ifive or six cases, or  even a single
case of plague, can, in June, as contagionists  allege,  generate a
sufficiency of contagion, to diffuse the disease  through a city, and
destroy thousands of its inhabitants, why cannot five or six hun-
dred, or a thousand cases, form, in November,  a sufficient amount
of the same matter, to prevent the complaint from expiring?   Its
symptoms continuing  the same as  previously shows the character
of the disease to be unchanged.   Why  then has its poison lost
its power? and why regain that power,  at a subsequent  period?
For the contagionists contend,  that the same poison, which has
become innocent now, resumes its  virulence  the following sum-
mer, or even a  dozen  of  summers  afterwards, and  reproduces
plague!   Were not this their  doctrine,  how  could  they assert,
that feather-beds slept on,  and clothes and fur caps worn by the
infected,  ropes used in burying the dead, and even a cobweb en-
closed in a  trunk, have regenerated  the malady, after a  lapse of
twelve  or fourteen years?  Well  might  I say,  with  Hamlet,
" There is something more than natural in this, if our philosophy
could find it out."   In fact, the whole matter, as represented by
the advocates of contagion, is a glaring incongruity—a specimen
of palpable self-contradiction, which  no  sound logic can counte-
nance, and no weight of authority, or artful devices  of sophistry
maintain.  The circumstances  of the termination of plague, con-
trasted with those of its beginning, are alone sufficient to subvert
the hypothesis of its  contagiousness.   As  already intimated, the
close of an epidemic  prevalence  of  that complaint resembles as
perfectly, in all material points, the close of a like prevalence of
yellow fever, as one sunset resembles another.   This fact fur-
nishes an additional argument,  in proof of the  identity of the two
diseases.
   5.  Closely allied  to the last  is another consideration, which
testifies  strongly to  the non-contagious  nature of plague.   No
sooner have the  ravages of that  complaint terminated,  in Con-
stantinople, Grand Cairo, and other  parts of the east, than, with-
out undergoing the slightest lustration, the houses just depopula- 
m
ted by it  are repeopled with fresh inhabitants.   By  these  new
tenants, the beds of the deceased are slept on, without cleansing,
their clothes worn, many of them  without being washed, their
mats sitten on, and other articles found in the dwellings used as
customary—all with perfect impunity.  Not a case of plague re-
sults from the practice.   Were that malady contagious, these oc-
currences would be impossible.  Nothing can reconcile them to
such  a quality  in it.  Yet,  though  those  articles of  bedding,
clothing, and furniture, cannot,  when  freshly imbued  with  the
poison, produce a single case of plague,  contagionists maintain,
that,  even years afterwards,  they may  be carried  hundreds  of
leagues through the air, by land or water,  and generate the disease
in distant places, to the devastation of cities, and the  terror of
nations!   A view of the subject so utterly at variance with  rea-
son and common sense would not deserve to be seriously treated,
if it were not for the immeasurable mischief it has aided in  pro-
ducing.  But its influence  cannot  continue  much longer.   It is
the product and  nurseling of ignorance and  credulity, and must
vanish under the light of knowledge, like its kindred phantoms
under that of morning.
   The preceding is another point of strict resemblance between
plague  and yellow fever.   Houses depopulated  by the latter
disease, as well as by the former, are,  after its termination in the
autumn, occupied immediately, uncleansed, by new tenants,  with
perfect impunity.
   6.   All attempts to communicate plague,  by inoculation, have
failed.  Many of the soldiers  of Napoleon,  in Egypt,  were  so
terrified at the supposed contagiousness of that complaint, that,
though  they would have  marched cheerfully to  the  cannon's
mouth, they were unwilling to attend  their  comrades when at-
tacked by it.  To dispel  this panic,  some of the physicians in-
oculated themselves, with  the matter  of buboes and  carbuncles
and other secretions of the sick, and several officers of rank sub-
mitted to the same operation,  in presence of the troops; yet, in
no instance, did the  experiment produce the disease.   By  this
bold and happy expedient,  and the further one of Napoleon him-
self daily visiting the hospitals, and ministering to the sick,  the 
33
apprehension of the soldiers was  removed,  and the  mortality of
the complaint lessened.
   Under this head may be noticed a discrepancy of  opinion,  or
rather of conjecture  among the contagionists, which is far from
testifying to the soundness of their hypothesis.   Those theorists
cannot a^ree, as to the source or laboratory of pestilential con-
tagion—I mean the part of the  body, in  which it is formed-
Some consider that  poison as the product of buboes and carbun-
cles; others, as generated by the skin, and thrown out in mix-
ture with the matter of perspiration; a third set, by the  lungs, and
diffused by the breath;  a fourth, by the liver,  and mingled  with
the bile; a fifth, by the kidneys; a sixth, by the salivary glands;
a seventh, by every  part of the system, the blood not  excepted;
while an eighth, with much more truth  and  modesty on their
side, frankly acknowledge, that they do not know where it is pro-
duced.   Such  a clashing of conjecture establishes clearly but one
position—that the parties in conflict are strangers to the matter,
about which they are contending.   Though concord in opinion
is not an infallible sign that that opinion is  true, the reverse is a
sure indication  of error.
   Here  is  another  strong  analogy between plague and  yellow
fever, it being as impracticable to communicate the latter disease
by inoculation, as the  former.  To settle this point, the late  Dr.
Firth, then of Philadelphia, made many intrepid and decisive ex-
periments.    He inoculated  himself with almost every  fluid from
the bodies  of persons ill of yellow fever, not excepting the  mat-
ter of black vomit,  and even with some of the solids of the dead,
reduced to a fluid condition, without being able to produce  the
disease.   Nor  did he stop here.   He inhaled the breath and per-
spired gases of the sick and dying, and the fumes of black vomit
and other excretions placed on heated iron and stones, and swal-
lowed considerable portions of the same substances—all with im-
punity.
   7.  Plague does  not  resemble small-pox, in being  but once
communicable.    The  same person, as  experience evinces, is
susceptible of  repeated  attacks  of it, during  the same season.
Were it contagious,  therefore, its ravages,  wherever it might get
             r> 
34
a footing, would terminate only with the depopulation of the place.
It is to me inconceivable  how an individual  could  survive.   All
would not die under the first attack;  but all must  finally  perish,
under reiterated attacks,  so  speedy  in their succession, as to
afford no intervening time  for the recovery of strength.   In this
view of the subject there is no extravagance.   The result would
be  inevitably  as  here  represented.  The same individual, the
same family, and the same city and  community  would sicken
again, from their own contagion, until their sufferings would find
a remedy in death.   And thus, by passing from  country to coun-
try, would this single disease depopulate the  earth, else all com-
munication  between  nations  must cease.   Suppose  small-pox
capable of an indefinite number  of attacks on the  same person.
The consequence is plain.  Nothing  short of the  extinction of
the human race could stay its  ravages.  That it does not possess
a reinfecting power, constitutes one of the countless instances of
the beneficence, wisdom, and fitness  of the  dispensation, under
which we live.
   8.   Like yellow fever, plague prevails  chiefly in hot climates,
and during the hot season of temperate and cold ones.    And it
prevails only in places abounding in filth, such as towns, camps,
garrisons, and cities, and on  the low lands of lakes and  rivers,
and other bodies  of water.  It never originates or appears  first,
in high, dry, and healthy situations.  Nor does it spread in them,
when  cases of it reach them from a distance.   The atmosphere
of such places is  as fatal to it, as the  deadliest form of gas  is to
animal life.   When, for example, plague  is prevailing in a  town
or city, if the sick be removed to a neighboring hilly or moun-
tainous district, they never  propagate  the disease.  They are
visited, prescribed for, and nursed, with entire safety;  and, in
places where the character of the complaint is understood, with-
out fear.  Facts testifying to this effect are reported even in the
writings of Dr. Russell, one of the most  strenuous advocates of
pestilential contagiousness.  Indeed it was an attentive  perusal
of his large work on the plague of Aleppo, not long after the com-
mencement of my medical studies, that first  unsettled my belief
in the  contagious nature of that  disease.   For the notion  had 
35
been inculcated on me, as on an article of my professional creed.
The evidence in support of pestilential  contagiousness, adduced
by Dr. Russell,  appeared to me so defective, even  during  my
medical pupilage, as to excite  in me strong doubts of the truth
of his hypothesis.   From subsequent investigation, those  doubts
have  turned  to  conviction.  I  shall only add, that, in  all  the
points referred to, under this head, yellow fever and plague may
be pronounced the same.
   9.   It  has been long known, and often pronounced an unac-
countable fact (truly unaccountable on the hypothesis  of  conta-
gion) that the physicians,  nurses, and visitants of plague-pattents
were not  more frequently attacked  by  the complaint, than per-
sons, who held no intercourse  with them.  The same is  true of
those concerned in  funeral preparations, and in burying the dead.
To such an extent  is this  the  case, that  those  individuals have
been often suspected and sometimes openly accused of possess-
ing prophylactic means, which they used for their  own  safety,
but refused to disclose, for the safety of others.   How different
is this from the fate of persons, who visit and nurse, in cases of
small-pox, having  never been  subjects of the complaint them-
selves!   As already mentioned, not more than one in many thou-
sands of such individuals escape an  attack.  On  this topic I shall
only further  observe, that my   suspicion  of the non-contagious
nature of yellow fever was first awakened, by  perceiving,  that
patients laboring under that complaint,  did not communicate it to
their physicians  and nurses.
   10.  The mode,  in  which  plague spreads,  is  very different
from that which marks  a disease  propagated by  contagion.   It
varies with the changes in the temperature of the weather.  While
the weather is hot,  it is rapid,  and experiences a check, when
the temperature falls.   Every history of  the disease  I have  ex-
amined,  contains a record  of these variations.   Russell  notices
them, in his  account  of the plague of Aleppo;  Hodges, in  his
Loimologia, or essay on the Great Plague of London; and Messrs.
Deidier,  Chirac, Verney, and  Chicoyneau, in  their  writings on
the plague of Marseilles, in 1720.
   Very  different from this  is  the  spreading of  small-pox,  by
means of contagion.   Uncontrolled by the weather,  that com- 
36
plaint, whether increasing or declining,  is regular  in  its move
ment, except when retarded by a diminished, or accelerated  by
an increased exposure of individuals.   But no exposure can mul-
tiply cases of plague, when the weather is cool, nor any precau-
tion prevent their multiplication, when it is hot.   It is  scarcely
necessary to observe, that,  in their dependence on the character
of the weather, plague and yellow fever obey  the same laws.
   11.   The following facts testify strongly to the non-contagious
nature of plague.
   The French officers and soldiers,  under Napoleon  in Egypt,
when attacked by plague, and  removed from the contaminated
atmosphere of a sickly situation, to a place where the atmosphere
was pure and healthy, never communicated the complaint to their
physicians or attendants.
   Both Turkish and French soldiers opened the graves of those
who had died of plague, stript off their apparel, and wore it them-
selves, with perfect impunity.
   When the  plague  was raging in  Grand  Cairo, the Citadel,
which was healthy,  was occupied by  the French garrison.   With
these soldiers  the inhabitants of the  city  held  free intercourse,
without, in a single instance,  communicating  to them the com-
plaint.
   The inhabitants of villages in Egypt, where plague is prevail-
ing, go out of them,  and mingle freely with  the  people  of the
healthy surrounding country, yet never infect them.
   Dr. Russell informs  us, that " In  the month of April 1759, a
large Turkish vessel, laden at  Alexandria, and  bound for Con-
stantinople, was  wrecked  on  her passage,  not far  from Cape
Baffo.   Of the crew who were saved,  a great part happened to
be infected with the  plague,  which  was  first communicated to
 certain villages on the  road  to  Limsol, and  afterwards to  that
town itself.
   " Some of the sailors died in the villages.   The rest,  after a
 short stay, proceeded to Larnica, where they remained  only a
 few days.   None of them  died  in Larnica; though it  was known
 that several of them actually had the  disease."
              *       *       *       *       •* 
37
  " The condition of Larnica, at this period,  was  remarkable.
It had received part of the infected  crew  from Limsol;  it had
maintained a constant intercourse  with  the infected quarters  of
the  island;  peasants and mule-drivers from  those parts, with pes-
tilential sores on their bodies, were  daily in the streets and mar-
kets;  and some of  them died in the  houses of Larnica.   On the
22d of May, a vessel arrived from Damietta, which  put on shore
some infected passengers  and sailors, who  lodged  in the houses,
and communicated  freely  with the natives.   Another Turkish ves-
sel, from the same  place,  arrived some  time after, with infected
persons on board,  one of which died, on  landing at the Marine.
Notwithstanding this neio importation, none of the inhabitants of
Larnica were known to have contracted  the disease."
  These  extracts,  which are from Russell, make a strong case
in opposition to the hypothesis of pestilential contagion.   Nor is
it difficult to explain  it.   In Limsol, and  the adjacent villages,
the condition of the atmosphere was pestilential, and plague was
not introduced into them, by infected  sailors, but broke   out in
them.  In  Larnica, the   atmosphere was pure and  healthy, and
plague not  only did not breakout, but could not be communicated
 in  it.
    Such are some of the  leading reasons,  for  denying plague to
be a  contagious  disease.  Others are not  wanting;  but a recital
 of them would seem  superfluous.  Those already  adduced  are
 deemed sufficient to rescue all unprejudiced and reflecting minds
 from the delusion of the  opposite  hypothesis;  while nothing per-
 haps could shake the faith of the prejudiced and unreflecting.   It
 is  needless, therefore, to dwell longer on the subject.
    Am  I asked, "  If plague be not contagious,  whence  does it
 originate,  and  how is it propagated? "   I  answer, it arises from
 the same source, and spreads  in  the same manner with yellow
 fever.   And, on these points,  in the latter disease,  no shadow of
 doubt  now rests—at least in the  United States,  and all other
 places,  where a fair opportunity  has been had to examine them.
 If there are still  in Great Britain,  and other  parts of  Europe,
 physicians of  character,  who believe yellow fever contagious, it
 is  because they have never seen it.   With the  enlightened and 
38
reflecting portion of the world therefore, their opinions can have
no weight, in opposition to the opinions of those who are familiar
with it.
  It is not unimportant to the inquiry  to observe, that when yel-
low fever broke out  in Philadelphia, in  1793, the views of the
physicians of our country, respecting  it,  were directly  the  re-
verse of what they are now.   The belief in its contagiousness was
universal.   Hence the wide-spread panic produced,  and the nu-
merous barriers that  were erected, to prevent it from overrunning
the  land.  Nor were the reasons alleged for believing it contagious
in any way different  from those  adduced and relied on, in proof
of the contagiousness of plague.  The  disease was said  to be
brought from the West Indies, by sailors sick of it, by the clothes
and chests of those who had died of it, or  in merchandize im-
pregnated with  its poison.   And, against its  introduction through
these channels, Quarantines of  unsparing severity were erected.
Even Dr. Rush, who first pronounced the complaint an  evil of
domestic origin, was  a firm believer in its contagiousness,   lo
this, his earliest wi kings on it testify.   Nor  did he abandon that
belief, until  after a lapse of twelve or thirteen years.   But he
yielded at length to the  stubbornness of facts, and  became a non-
contagionist.  I am the more particular, in  my representation of
this  matter, from a wish to disabuse the public mind, in relation
to it.   A belief prevails very generally, that Dr.  Rush was the
author of the non-contagious doctrine,  as applied to yellow fever.
The notion has no foundation in truth.   That doctrine was broach-
ed and  maintained by young men, who are usually first to assert
and defend new truth; and the contest, on the subject of it, had
been long and  bitter, before the  distinguished  Professor relin-
quished his  error.   Nor did he  ever become a  strenuous  advo-
cate of non-contagion,   though  he firmly believed  in  it.   He
deemed it sufficient to renounce publicly his original and erroneous
opinion on the  subject,  and left  to others to  finish  the conflict.
This was fair.   No part of the victory could of right be ascribed
to him.  It  would  have been usurpation in him therefore to claim
any share in the honors of it.
  It is now acknowledged, by all  physicians conversant with it,
that yellow fever is of the same family with common bilious fever, 
39
and arises from the same source.   It is  the  product of malaria,
formed by dead organic matter,  in the  process  of dissolution.
So is plague.   Every fact of any  moment,  connected with the
origin, progress, decline, and termination  of that complaint,  is
confirmatory of this.   Indeed, as already intimated, a few inci-
dental symptoms excepted, its analogy to yellow fever is so per-
fect,  as to amount to  identity, slightly modified.   Certainly  no
radical difference  between the two diseases can be shown.   It is
believed,  therefore, that nothing can throw more light on the pro-
duction and propagation of plague, than a summary of this  analo-
gy.   Hence, contrary to  my original intention, I  shall furnish
one,  as brief  as I can render it, consistently with perspicuity.
Though many of the  elements of it have been already exhibited,
in a detached  condition, it is thought that a condensed view of
them, united  and supporting each other,  may be more conclusive.
   As already stated, plague and yellow fever are the native growth
of hot climates, and of the hot season of temperate and cold ones.
 Only under peculiar  circumstances, to be referred  to  hereafter,
 do they ever prevail,  when the weather  is cold.
   They break out and spread only in places, where  filth abounds;
 and, other things  being equal, in proportion  as that is more abun-
 dant, they  are more general and  malignant.  In places of real
 purity, they never appear, except  in the form  of cases brought
 from a  distance;  and such cases always  terminate, without prop-
 agating the complaints, or leaving any seed behind them.   Cities,
 towns,  and  garrisons  are their  hot-beds, though they rise  and
 spread also in the low grounds  of rivers  and other bodies of
 water,  in  marshy  situations, and wherever  the soil  is  alluvial, or
 rich in vegetable  and animal relics.   As  already intimated,  the
 filth  productive of them consists of dead organic matter,  under-
 going dissolution, and forming  new combinations.   They  are
 therefore of chemical origin, not the offspring of morbid secretion.
 To speak more definitely on this point, which  is peculiarly im-
 portant, in the present disquisition.
    To generate the poison of plague or yellow fever, three agents
 are essential; heat, moisture, and dead organic matter.   Where
 either  of these  is wanting, the  complaints  never originate or 
40
  spread.   Hence,  in the sandy regions of Asia and Africa, where
  there is heat enough, and, in some places, water enough, but  no
  dead vegetable or  animal matter,  plague is  unknown.   Nor, for
  the same reason, does yellow fever  visit the sandy pine lands of
  the American  continent.  Those  forests, though wanting neither
  heat nor moisture, contain no organic  substances,  in a state  of
  dissolution.  Hence their healthfulness.
    The plague terminates in  Egypt,  from a  similar cause.   The
  common belief is,  that it is  there  checked,  by the  inundation  of
  the Nile.   No hypothesis,  however,  can  be more unfounded.
  The plague ceases about the twenty-fourth of June, and the Nile
  does  not pass its  banks  until  the middle of August.   But, no
 rain falling  in the Delta, nor a  cloud existing to  cover the  sun,
 and the  weather being intensely hot, the whole country,  by the
 twentieth of June,  is as  leafless and parched, as if swept over by
 a conflagration.  Except within the banks  of  the  river, and in
 cisterns, and other covered  receptacles, the land  is waterless.
 The dews themselves  no longer descend.   The consequence of
 all this is plain.  Water is essential to the  formation of plague-
 poison.   But it is  now  wanting.   The poison therefore is no
 longer  formed; and  plague  disappears.  Then it  is  that  the
 dwellings of persons, who have died  of the  complaint,  are  im-
 mediately occupied by fresh incumbents, their beds slept on, their
 clothes worn,  and  their  furniture used,  with  perfect impunity.
 Could this be done, were the disease  contagious?  No physician
 of standing, will hazard his reputation, by replying  affirmatively.
   Again.   Egypt,  while  flooded  by  the Nile,  a  period which
 lasts  from early in September until  some  time in January, is
 exempt from plague, for two reasons.   It  has too much water,
 and too little heat.   For a superabundance  of the former  is as
 fatal to the dissolution of dead organic matter, and the formation
 of miasmata, as a deficiency of the latter.  When, however,  the
 waters have subsided, plague, or  some  other form of bilious
 fever commences again in February or  March, according to  the
heat, and other characteristics of the seasons.   Why?  Because
the ingredients requisite for generating the poison of it, are again
supplied.  The debris of vegetables, and other kinds of dead  or- 
41
ganic matter, mixed with humidity, have been deposited, by the
retreating waters, the sun is powerful, and the  atmosphere hot.
The  virus therefore  is produced as  naturally and  certainly, as
light bodies rise, or ponderous ones descend.   Thus passes the
year.  Plague-poison is formed in the spring, and  extinguished
by the heat and aridity of summer;  and its reproduction is pre-
vented by the coolness and superabundant water of autumn  and
winter.
  Plague and yellow fever, as heretofore mentioned,  are affected
in a  similar way by changes in the weather.   A few cool days in
summer and autumn, retard their  progress; and  a few hot ones
accelerate it;  and the cold of winter brings it to a close.  The
reason of this is plain.  Hot weather  promotes animal and vege-
table dissolution;  cool weather is unfriendly to it;  and cold weath-
er stops it.   Thus is there that perfect correspondence  between
the  march of these complaints, and the production of miasmata,
which always subsists between effects and their causes.
  These  two diseases  spare alike the physicians,  nurses,  and
visitants of those who are sick of them.   But they would not do
this, were they contagious.   They also, in a like way, terminate
suddenly, on  the commencement of  cold weather, though the
persons then  laboring under them are numerous, and their poison,
did they produce any, not only abundant, but in the best possible
condition to propagate and continue them.  For it is worthy of
remark, that cool weather is more favorable than warm to the prop-
agation of a  contagious complaint.   In the latter state  of  tem-
perature, the doors  and windows of houses and sick rooms being
open, the free access and circulation  of pure air dilutes the poi-
son, weakens  its virulence, and carries it away.   This renders it
comparatively harmless.   In cold  weather, the condition  of things
is reversed.   Doors and windows being closed, and fresh air ex-
cluded, the contagion not only retains all its virulence,  but is
confined  in close apartments, and is therefore in the best imagin-
able   condition to  propagate  disease.   For nurses to escape
a contagious complaint, under such circumstances, would seem
impossible.  On the hypothesis of contagion, then,  the sudden
disappearance of plague and yellow fever, on the commencement
          6 
42
of winter, is inexplicable.   But, under the doctrine, that they are
produced by the miasmata of animal and vegetable dissolution,
the  explanation is easy.   The degree  of heat requisite to  the
formation of the poison is wanting.   The poison  therefore  is no
longer generated, and the maladies cease.  It is not unimportant
to remark, that a theory  is justly considered  approaching truth
in proportion as  it explains more  and more of the phenomena it
bears on; and that theory which explains them all, is truth itself.
I shall only add, that I am  not acquainted with a single fact, con-
nected with the  rise, progress, decline, or termination of plague
or yellow fever,  which may not be explained, on the theory, that
those complaints  are the  product of a miasm, resulting from  the
dissolution of organic matter.   On the contrary,  the  hypothesis
of their contagiousness explains nothing.
  To the foregoing similarities between plague and yellow fever,
may be subjoined the important fact,  that their seat in  the human
body is the same.  They attack chiefly the stomach, duodenum,
and other abdominal viscera, and  produce in  them the same sort
of derangement.  In their pathology, therefore, as well as in other
respects,  they may be  pronounced  identical.   To the truth of
 his, the shades of difference, which they present in a few points,
constitutes no valid exception.   I might generalize still farther,
and safely add, that the  similarity in origin,  progress, decline,
and termination between  plague, yellow  fever, and the various
forms of common bilious fever is  so striking, as  to show,  satis-
factorily,  that they all belong to the same family, proceeding from
a common source, and being governed by common laws.    It is
in proof of this affinity, or  rather  identity of the two complaints,
that plague, when declining, sometimes runs into " tertian fever."
Such, according to the statement of Russell, was the case with the
plague of Aleppo, in 1762.  Indeed, when that complaint termi-
nates earlier in the season than  usual, it frequently goes off in a
remitting form.   So, at times, does yellow fever.
  Other analogies, between the two  diseases  I am comparing,
are  not wanting;  but those already enumerated are sufficient for
my  purpose.   If they do not prove  the complaints to be  per-
fectly identical, they show, at  least, that they have  the  same
parentage, and are to be prevented in the same way. 
43
   Shall I be told, that these maladies cannot be the same, because
 they exhibit different symptoms;  plague being marked with buboes
 and carbuncles, and yellow fever with black vomit and a jaundiced
 skin?   I  reply, that this objection is without weight.   The symp-
 toms referred to are incidental,  not essential.  The  complaints
 exist without them.  In the lightest, as  well as in the most fatal
 forms of plague, neither buboes not carbuncles appear.  And  the
 same is true of yellow fever, as respects black vomit and  a yellow
 skin.   Cases of the lowest and the highest grade exhibit neither
 of them.   Besides—I have  witnessed  glandular swellings and
 cutaneous ulcers in yellow fever;  in plague, the skin  is often of
 a yellowish hue, and,  as Russell and other  writers  inform us, a
 dark matter is, in many cases, thrown from  the stomach.   This
 is no doubt genuine black vomit;  a discharge more frequent in
 yellow fever  than in any other complaint, but by no means peculiar
 to it.   Were a mere variety in symptoms to constitute a radical
 difference in disease, every attack of fever would be suigeneris—
 specifically different from every other.  No  two  attacks are pre-
 cisely alike.   There are thousands of cases of yellow fever much
 less like other cases of  it, than they are like cases of plague.   Of
 the latter complaint, the same  may be affirmed.   Many  cases of
 it resemble yellow fever more  than they do  other cases  of itself.
 I repeat,  that,  in their history and philosophy,   including their
 origin, progress, declension, and  termination, the two maladies
 are identical.   Nor are they less so, in other respects, especially
 practical ones.   To all intents and purposes, they are identical
 also in  their  pathology  and cure.   Whatever I may have hereto-
 fore said,  therefore, or may say hereafter, of either of them, may
 be considered more or less applicable to the other—'in  all leading
 points,  strictly  applicable.
  Although the miasm,  arising from the dissolution of vegetable
 and animal substances,  has been represented by me,  as the cause
 of plague; it is not perhaps exclusively so.   When that complaint
 prevails epidemically, and especially when, as  is  sometimes the
case, it prevails,  to a  limited  extent, during cold  weather,  its
common virus  would seem to  be  aided by another agent.   Nor
can that agent  be well   conjectured to be any thing else, than a 
44
 pestilential  constitution of the atmosphere.   By this is meant, a
 condition of that aeriform body, calculated either to facilitate the
 formation of miasm,  to render it more virulent, or, in some
 other way, to  act as its  auxiliary, in the production of pestilence.
   Were I asked, whether this pestilential  constitution depends
 ln any measure  on  the  sensible qualities of the  atmosphere,  my
 reply would be, No;  because its effects are manifested under every
 degree  of  atmospherical temperature,  humidity,  dryness,  and
 weight.   Though, as heretofore stated,  hot weather favors  the
 production and  spreading of plague, neither the extent nor malig-
 nity of that  disease  is always  in proportion  to  the height of the
 thermometer.   Some cool and pleasant summers have proved,
 in the same places, more pestilential  than other  hot ones;  and,
 while moderate and even warm winters are usually free from pes-
 tilence,  uncommonly cold ones have been occasionally marked by
 it.   These facts we  learn from the history of the  disease;  and
they seem to testify  conclusively,  that some extra and peculiar
 cause contributes,  at times,  to the  production  and protracted
continuance of plague.  The prevalence  of that complaint  during
 winter, is an uncommon effect; and must not be ascribed to an
 ordinary source.
  True; some physicians deny the existence of any secret con-
 stitution of the atmosphere, and attribute pestilence to its sensi-
ble  qualities.  Denial, however, is no proof; yet, in the present
 case, it  is all the proof  that has been offered.   Not a fact  has
 been adduced, to render the prevalence of the constitution  re-
ferred  to improbable.  All attempts  to account for epidemic
 forms of disease without it have failed.  Witness  influenza,  a
 complaint which appears  and spreads,  in  every season  of  the
year, and under every modification  of the  weather, independently
 of any quality  in it  addressed  to our  senses.   Why?  Because
there is  something peculiar in the air that acts on us.   No other
reasonable cause can be  assigned.  Of scarlatina and measles  the
same may be said.  Though they are usually denominated spring
epidemics, they  are not confined to  that season.  They prevail
 also in summer,  autumn, and  winter, regardless  of the sensible
 qualities of the atmosphere.   And whether they ever arise from 
45
contagion, or not, they unquestionably rise and spread, without
it.  They exist, I mean, in the character of real epidemics.  But
an epidemic does not originate either from  contagion, or from a
miasm generated  in a given spot.   It is always in some degree,
and, at times, I believe, exclusively, the product of a  peculiar
atmospherical constitution.   The  source of that constitution is
one of the secrets which nature has not yet revealed to us.
   Of the foregoing remarks,  the history of cholera appears to be
confirmatory.   Within  the last sixteen years,  that complaint has
pervaded almost the whole civilized world, and produced a waste
of human life, that has scarcely a parallel.  That its progress and
malignity are increased by hot weather, and the miasm it produces
is not denied.  But its existence does not  depend  on  them.
Could they alone  generate it, as they do common  bilious fever,
the world would never  be free from it.   Its existence would be
as perpetual  as the progress of the earth, in  her journey round
the sun.   There is always, in an immense section of the globe,
heat, moisture, and dead organic matter enough, to generate the
local miasm of cholera,  were  that alone the cause of the disease.
But it is not,  as  facts abundantly show.   Epidemic cholera is a
new modification  of disease, and  is therefore  the  product of a
novel cause.   This is as true, as that like causes  produce  like
effects and that unlike effects arise from unlike causes. Nor can the
source of this new form of pestilence be looked for elsewhere, than
in a new and peculiar constitution of the atmosphere.  While that
constitution shall continue, the complaint will  continue, with but
little aid from local miasm. And when it shall have passed away, so
will epidemic cholera, whatever may be the heat and moisture of the
seasons, and the quantity of  local miasm formed.   It cannot be
doubted, that, since cholera appeared in India, in  1817, it has
prevailed in thousands  of places,  under sensible qualities of the
atmosphere,  which  never produced it, in anterior times, and
which will not do it again, when  a congenial constitution of the
atmosphere shall be wanting.
   But perhaps epidemic small-pox proves more incontrovertibly
than any other form of disease, the existence of a peculiar at-
mospherical constitution.  That complaint, as already mentioned, 
46
depends, for its propagation, almost  always, on contagion alone.
And then its  progress  is comparatively slow.   The  reason is
plain.   None contract it, except as the result of a near approach
to persons laboring under it, or of handling infected articles.   The
individual attacked, therefore, is usually aware of the exposure sus-
tained.   When, however, the malady becomes epidemic, as it did
a few years ago, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, the case is other-
wise.  Individuals then often receive the poison, they know not
how.  Though not sensible  of any exposure  to  either infected
persons or things, the disease assails  them.   For those who have
never had the complaint, and are  not protected by vaccination,
merely to reside  in  the infected place, whether  city,  town, or
country, or to pass through it, is sufficient to expose them to the
danger of an attack, and frequently induces one.   Make its way
there as  it may, the poison  is in   the atmosphere, and produces
in it a variolous constitution.  It is under the influence of such a
constitution,  that two  events,  rarely witnessed at other  times,
not unfrequently occur.  Persons  repeatedly  exposed to small-
pox before, with impunity, now suffer from it, without any known
exposure; while others experience  a  second attack of it.   To
this  may be added, that the spread  of the disease,  under such
circumstances, is unusually rapid and irregular.   It does not pass,
in its ordinary way, from person  to  person, according to expo-
sure, or from one family or neighborhood to the adjoining one.
Like epidemic plague and  yellow  fever, it  leaps  over persons,
families, and neighborhoods  that   are contiguous, and lights on
those that are more remote;  and then  returns to such as have
escaped.  In fine—being  a true epidemic, it spreads like  other
complaints of that class.
  Such are  the facts; and there appears to  be but one mode of
explaining them.   A condition of the atmosphere exists unusually
favorable  to  the propagation of small-pox.  Hence,  as already
mentioned, it has  received the appropriate name  of variolous.
The whole atmosphere of a town or city resembles, to a certain
extent, that of a small-pox ward in an infirmary.   Whoever en-
ters it, unprotected,  is obnoxious  to the virus.
  It is not my intention to inquire into the nature of the variolous
constitution.   Whether there is a positive atmospherical forma- 
47
tion of the matter of small-pox (that matter must have been ori-
ginally formed somewhere, before its first  attack on the human
system; and why may it not be formed  in  the same way now?)
or whether there is produced in the atmosphere a condition un-
usually friendly to  the diffusion and action  of the poison,  when
secreted in the bodies of the  sick—whether either of these hy-
potheses, or some other different from  both be true,  my object
is attained.   The constitution contended for exists, and that  is
sufficient for my present purpose.   In  like manner,  it appears
indubitable, that  a constitution  of the atmosphere, inordinately
favorable to the production and propagation of pestilential  com-
plaints, occurs  at times; and that, under its influence,  real plague
may prevail, in some degree, during the  winter.
   In truth, the form and character of disease, in general, is con-
trolled and determined,  to an extent much greater than is  com-
monly imagined, by some  secret condition of the  atmosphere.
It is and must be such a condition, that produces  the predisposi-
tion to  every epidemic and endemic complaint.   And  the pre-
disposition shapes and settles  the character  of the disease, which
any exciting cause may develope.  But all  complaints, not conta-
gious, that overrun cities,  towns, and districts of  country,  being
endemic or epidemic, are essentially connected with correspond-
ing forms of the  condition referred to.   It may be added, that
there are very few kinds of general disease, which are not  occa-
sionally more or less epidemic.  To illustrate  my meaning.
   A sudden change in the atmosphere, from dryness and warmth,
to  coolness and  humidity, excites, at one time,  a  prevailing
catarrh,  at another, a general rheumatic  or  pleuretic affection, in
athird instance, an epidemic diarrhoea, in a fourth, a dysentery, and
in a fifth, a general prevalence  of regular bilious  fever.  These
are  common  occurrences,  and have  their respective causes.
Why does not  the  same change in the weather, always  produce
the same form of disease?  The reply is plain, and appears sat-
isfactory.  The members of the same community have,  at differ-
ent times, a general predisposition to different complaints; and
the change in the weather, or any other exciting cause,  can pro-
duce in them no disease, but that to which  they are predisposed. 
48
 At one time, they  are  predisposed to catarrh,  and the change
 excites it; at another time, to pleurisy, and a similar change pro-
 duces that;  again to diarrhoea, to dysentery, or  to bilious fever;
 and the same exciting cause brings  either into existence, accord-
 ing to the predisposition, at the time of its application.   Thus,
 when different seeds  are planted by the side of each other, the
 same genial influence of heat,  light, air,  moisture and earth, ex-
 cites in one of them the vegetative action necessary to produce
 a stalk of corn; in another, that productive of hemp; in a third, of
 cotton; and in a fourth, of the vine.   Why?  Because each seed
 is so organized, as  to be predisposed to produce after  its kind,
 under the action of the proper exciting causes.   But no excite-
 ment can elicit from the  corn  seed a  stalk of hemp, from the
 hemp seed, a grape vine, or the reverse.
   Another question remains to be  proposed, and solved.  Whence
 comes the predisposition to disease, common at once to a whole
 community?   I answer, from a common cause—some secret but
 operative condition of the atmosphere.   There is no other source
 from which it can be  derived.  The  sensible qualities of the at-
 mosphere cannot produce it, because it does not change, as they
 change.   Nor does it come from diet or drink, the habits, cus-
 toms, or modes of life of the people—they being  stationary—the
 same during one form  of predisposition, that  they are  during
 another.   The condition  produced in  the  atmosphere, by the
 mixture of marsh miasmata with it, is secret.  Neither our senses
 not experiments can detect  it, or give us any  knowledge of it.
 Its  existence is known to us  only from  its effects  in deranging
 health.   It is therefore as much entitled to the term constitution,
 as the condition productive of influenza or cholera.
  I have thought  it necessary to  dwell thus far  on atmospherical
 constitutions, for two reasons: without some knowledge  of them,
 the philosophy of plague cannot,  in my opinion,  be understood;
and yet, as already stated, there are physicians of distinction, who
 deny their existence.   It  is asserted, by  several of these, that,
 except through its  sensible  qualities of heat and moisture, and
the malaria they aid in  forming,  the atmosphere has no agency
in  the  production of cholera; but that, in all other respects,  it 
49
is the same, while that pestilence is depopulating cities and ap-
palling nations, as it is in a period of general health!
  Were I asked, wherein consists  that  constitution of the at-
mosphere,  which favors  the  production of  plague ?  my reply
would be, that I  do not know.   There is  reason, however,  to
suspect, that in the  formation of every pestilential constitution,
the matter of electricity has some agency.  It is not to be doubted,
that,  during pestilential  periods, electrical phenomena  are, in
some way, irregular—at one time excessive—at another defective,
and again productive of novel phenomena.   History and observa-
tion unite, in testifying to this.  Igneous meteors are all, perhaps,
electrical; and that  they  often  superabound, in  a  high degree,
during the prevalence of pestilence,  is  matter of notoriety.   We
are informed by Josephus, and other writers, that, on several oc-
casions, when plague prevailed in Jerusalem, they were so  strik-
ing and fearful, in their  display  over  the  city, and throughout
Judea, that  the terror and superstition of the inhabitants converted
them,   in  fancy, into  fiery  warriors  engaged in  combat with
blazing  lances, arrows,  and  swords.   By  the Romans,  similar
phenomena  were observed, with  nearly the same fears and ima-
ginings, during the  devastations of pestilence  in Italy.   Hence
 the poet tells us, on the faith of history,  that,
                    " A little ere the mighty Julius fell,
                    Stars shone with trains of fire; "*
and,  by consulting the Roman writers, of the time,  we find that,
 about that period, Tuscany and  other parts of Italy were visited
 by plague.
    During several of the  yellow fever  calamities in Philadelphia,
 and the other Atlantic cities, electrical  phenomena were unusually
 irregular.   Shooting stars were, at  times, abundant and brilliant,
 in  a degree far beyond  what  is  common.    Throughout  some
 seasons, especially  the summer  of 1793,  scarcely a gleam  of

  * Shall I be told that this allusion is to comets'?  My reply is, that earthquakes,
 storms, and tempests are recorded, as marking that period, as well as comets.  Indeed
 those celestial and terrestrial phenomena  are often concomitants of each other.  The
 night preceding the fall  of "the mighty Julius" was frightfully  tempestuous, and
 poured unwonted sheets of lightning through the streets of Rome, i*To so great an ex-
 tent did the terrors of the tempest go, as to make some of the conspirators doubt,
 whether they were an encouragement from the gods, to go on with^ their work, or an
 admonition to  desist.
7 
50
lightning was seen; while, in others, thunder-storms were inor-
dinately frequent  and severe.   In  1799, the shooting stars were
most abundant.
  This is the second year of pestilential cholera in the United
States.   And  it must be  in the recollection of  every  one,  that
while the summer of 1832 was almost exempt from lightning and
thunder, that of 1833 was memorable for them.   The instances
of human beings and  domestic animals  being killed, and  barns
and dwelling-houses fired  by lightning,  during the  latter season,
were unprecedentedly numerous.  To these electrical  irregulari-
ties may be added the  most  extraordinary of all—the brilliant,
perhaps unparalleled celestial fire-works let off,  on the morning
of the  12th of November, 1833, and gazed at, with mingled emo-
tions of terror, wonder, and  delight,  through the whole United
States, and probably  in other countries.
   If earthquakes  and volcanic  eruptions are not exclusively the
product of electricity, that fluid has at  least a deep concern  in
them.   But almost every frightful pestilential period that can  be
referred to, has been noted for those terrific phenomena.   His-
tory informs us, that the reign  of Justinian, in the sixth century,
was signalized alike by  earthquakes and pestilence.  In the  rav-
ages of the latter, from  one  to  two hundred millions of the hu-
man race are  said to have perished, while,  by  the former,  the
earth was  convulsed repeatedly, almost from pole  to  pole, and
from the rising to the setting sun.  The  same period  was also
marked by a superabundance of fiery and other meteors,  in  the
production of which electricity took part.
   The twelfth century was another period of extensive and de-
structive earthquakes and volcanic  eruptions, frightful meteors,
days of unwonted darkness, and devastating pestilence.   So fre-
quent and appalling were  these events,  from  1158 to 1170, that
the writers of that era dwell on them more than on any thing else.
   But I could not even allude to the innumerable plagues, earth-
quakes, volcanic  eruptions,  fiery meteors, and  destructive inun-
dations of former ages, contemporary  with each  other, without
giving a concise history of the times.   For a valuable  catalogue
of them, the reader is referred to the  first volume of Webster 
51
on Epidemics, a  work  with which  every physician should be
familiar.   He will there find,  that  from  an early period  of the
Christian era, up to the sixteenth or  seventeenth century,  the
earth was a fearful theatre of physical and moral  commotion;
earthquakes,  tempests,  and other fierce  electrical  phenomena,
uniting with pestilence,  to play their parts  in it.    Since that date,
be the cause what it may,  our globe has been,  comparatively, in
a state of repose, until within  the last fifteen  or twenty years,
during which period its concussions have been again very frequent
and severe.
   Observation and contemporary history concur in the fact, that,
since about the time of the commencement of  cholera, in the
east,  earthquakes and  volcanic  eruptions have  been  unusually
violent and numerous, over a large portion of the globe.   Asia,
Africa, Europe, and America have all felt them.   So has Oceanica.
Nor has the  ocean itself  escaped them.   Not  only have they
frightfully concussed its waters, but have  thrown up new  islands
from its fathomless profound.   All  this shows, that  the earth is
vexed by  an  internal disturbance greater than usual,  whose ne-
cessary effect is, to discharge into the atmosphere new gases, or
an inordinate amount  of common ones.   It is not to be imagined
that it is only when the  earthquake and the volcano are convulsing
the ground, that those gases are eliminated.  They are no doubt
sent forth, in augmented quantities, during the entire volcanic and
earthquake period, by the  secret but powerful working of the in-
ternal cause.   It is not merely at the time of the shake and the
eruption, that the cause of those phenomena is at work.  There
is reason to believe, that the convulsions  are but the consumma-
tion of preparatory operations more or less protracted.   And it
is further probable, that such operations  are constantly throwing
into the atmosphere gases unfriendly to animal life.   No wonder,
then, that, during such a condition of the air  they breathe, man
and the beings inferior to him  should suffer in their health.  Nor
does it seem improbable, that the mischief is increased, by irre-
gularities in the action of atmospherical electricity.   These views,
which are  offered only  as conjectural, will be received for what-
ever the reader may think  them worth. 
52
   Were it admissible to dwell a moment longer on these atmos-
pherical constitutions unfriendly to health,  I might specify other
phenomena, which usually accompany them, and concur in prov-
ing their   existence.   Among  these  are,  long  continued and
parching droughts, famine consequent on this,  by reason  of the
failure of the products of the earth, the desertion of sickly places
by birds, pestilence among domestic and wild animals,  extending
often  to the tenants of the air  and the waters, in common with
those of dry land, and inordinate hosts of insects  and worms.
History, as well sacred as profane, tells us,  that  in Palestine, and
other oriental regions, drought and famine,  the  locust,  the grass-
hopper, the  caterpillar, and the palmer-worm  were among the
usual  concomitants of pestilence.   Nor is  a like  concomitancy
wanting in  our own times  and country.  During the  period  of
epidemic yellow fever, in our Atlantic cities,  the  country was
several times swarmed with grasshoppers;  and,  in the summer  of
1S32, I saw many large tracts  of forest timber, and was informed
of a number more, whose  leaves were stript off, or withered, by
the depredations of the caterpillar.  Nor was a  like phenomenon
wanting in  1833.   The latter  season, moreover, even  during its
dryest period, and when the weather was  not  inordinately hot,
was more  prolific in certain cryptogamous plants, especially the
conferva fontinalis on  standing water, and  mucor on humid sub-
stances, than  any  other within my remembrance.   All this tes-
tifies  conclusively to the existence of an extraordinary  condition
of the atmosphere.   Unusual effects cannot spring from ordinary
causes.  But  I must pass  to another point of my subject.
   As heretofore stated, the  hypothesis  of  the contagiousness  of
yellow fever is extinct, in the United States, and all other places,
where the  disease is  understood; and that of the contagiousness
of cholera  is hastening steadily to the same condition.   But the
notion that plague is contagious, though evidently on  the decline,
still predominates.   To refute  that error is the main  design  of
the foregoing discussion.  If the attempt has been successful, the
question,
   " Are the restrictions  on the entrance  of vessels  into port
called Quarantine  Laws, useful? " may be easily  solved.  The 
53
answer is, of course, an unqualified negative.   A disease not con-
tagious cannot be communicated by commerce, or any other form
of intercourse,  from one country to  another; and therefore all
barriers, in the shape of Quarantine  Laws, unnecessary in them-
selves, are inadmissible restraints on human liberty, industry, and
right.   Before treating  further,  however, of  this topic, a  few re-
marks on the injurious effects of a belief in the hypothesis of pes-
tilential contagion, will not, I trust, be altogether useless.  Those
effects have  an equal bearing on the sick and the well.
   A belief in the contagious nature of plague often induces those
who are  attacked by it, to conceal their  sickness, as long as  pos-
sible, from a dread of being consigned  to a pest-hospital, or an
apprehension of being deserted by every one, and left to suffer
and die  in solitude, without  aid,  comfort, or  sympathy.  This
overpowering terror, by preventing early and opportune  medical
assistance, has rendered  fatal hundreds  of thousands of cases of
the complaint, that would have  terminated favorably,  under  a
seasonable and skilful course of treatment.
   From the influence of this fatal belief, millions of sick persons
have had their worst fears realized, by being actually deserted by
connexions,  friends, nurses, and physicians,  and left to their  fate,
without aliment to sustain their sinking strength, medicine to heal
their suffering, or water to mitigate it.  A combination of evils so
hopeless and depressing, could scarcely  fail,  especially in persons
of delicate and sensitive frames, to give a  fatal turn even  to a
moderate form of disease.  From a malignant one thus aggravated
there can be no  escape.  Under such   circumstances, death is
rendered the more certain, from its being welcomed by the suffer-
ers, in consequence of their sense of abandonment and  despair.
Deserted by every one, their desire  of life  forsakes  them;  and
with  that desire goes much of the vigor of body, and elasticity of
spirits,  that might contribute to their recovery.  That  under de-
bilitating and depressing diseases, hope  tends to sustain, and des-
pair to  destroy life, is an axiom in medicine, which no one ques-
tions.   Hence the importance  of giving all the  encouragement
their cases will justify to persons attacked by malignant com-
plaints. 
54
   There is again, on the other hand, to many sick persons,  an
 influence peculiarly saddening and debilitating in the  belief, that
 they  are laboring under a contagious disease, dangerous to those
 whose affection and kindness  draw them to their relief.   That a
 feeling of this sort aggravates their complaints, cannot be doubted;
 and that it has sent thousands to  the grave, appears probable.   I
 have  seen individuals much  distressed and  injured by  it, and
 heard them expressing a wish to die, that  they might  no longer
 endanger the  lives of their friends.  Under such circumstances,
 soldiers have  earnestly requested to be shot,  that they might not
 be instrumental in the death of their comrades.
   The sort of medical attendance, which persons sick of a com-
 plaint supposed to be contagious often  receive,  is injurious  to
 them, because it is no better than neglect—sometimes perhaps
 worse,  as  it  may  interfere  perniciously  with the recuperative
 powers  of nature.   The latter effect it can scarcely fail to pro-
 duce, in consequence of the debilitating terror it often excites.
 During  the Great Plague  of London, Dr. Hodges prescribed for
 his patients out of his parlor window,  they being in  the  street;
 and,  in  the plague of Aleppo, Dr. Russell prescribed to the sick,
 who were also in the street below, through his chamber window
 in the second story of his house!  This was a mockery degrading
 to the Profession, and  trebly disgraceful  to  the members who
 practised it.   Yet have I witnessed, in the United States,  scenes
 of the kind scarcely less revolting.   I have repeatedly  seen phy-
 sicians feeling the pulses of yellow fever patients,  at arm's-length,
 with their faces averted, carefully ejecting their saliva on the car-
 pet, and with sponges or handkerchiefs wet with vinegar,  applied
 to their noses! and I have turned  from the spectacle with pity and
 disgust!   Conduct on the part of physicians so well calculated  to
 excite alarm, cannot fail to injure  timid patients, and may destroy
 them.  For the truth of the following anecdote I  am responsible,
 having myself witnessed it, and been concerned in it, as a party.
  A lady of  youth and beauty, in  the city of-----, the  family
 physician being a  contagionist,  was attacked by  yellow fever.
The case  proving obstinate, and  the anxiety for the patient's re-
covery being  great,  a consultation was requested, and the con- 
55
suiting physician selected was a non-contagionist, and an intimate
friend  of the distressed family.   On entering the sick-room, the
first object that arrested his notice, was the physician in attend-
ance  feeling the  young lady's pulse,  in the manner and attitude
just described, with a cloud of odorous volatiles issuing from about
his nostrils, and  filling the  chamber.   Several  members of the
family  were  present, each snuffing  a handkerchief or napkin,
moistened with vinegar or spirits of  camphor;  and dismay  was
depicted in every countenance.   Indignant at  the  unmanly be-
havior of his colleague, and determined, if possible, to dispel the
terror, and counteract the  mischief it had  produced, the consult-
ing physician, being  young, and having a  little  dash of gallantry
in bis address, advanced to the  bed-side  of  his patient, with  a
cheerful countenance, took her hand, and, pressing it gently but
cordially in both of his, kissed it.  He then seated himself fami-
liarly on the side of the bed, still holding  the lady's hand, as  if
examining her pulse, and placing his  countenance  over her's, so
 as to receive her breath, bent his body more than was necessary,
bringing his face  near to her's, under  the pretext of making a very
 accurate examination of her tongue.  A little abashed by so close
 a scrutiny, the   patient slightly turned away her face,  when  the
 following  brief dialogue ensued:—
    " Why," said the physician to the lady, in a  mild but sprightly
 tone, " do you turn away your face?   Do you think that, because
 you  permitted me to kiss your hand, I was about to take the lib-
 erty of kissing your brow? "  Turning her face back again, she
 said, with a faint smile, the first that had brightened her counte-
 nance for several days, " Are you not afraid of me?"  " Afraid
 of you?  I have known you many years, and never suspected you
 of a  bad action.   Why then should I  be  afraid of you? "  " 0!
 Sir,  I have a contagious fever;  and, by coming so near me, and
 receiving my breath, you might catch it."  "A contagious fever!
 no such thing.  You  have no more contagion about you, than I
 have—except the contagion of your smiles, which make every
 body else smile."   The  effect of this was electric.  " 0! " ex-
 claimed the lady,  pressing the physician's hand, in turn, " is not
 my  fever then contagious? "   " No;  I assure  you, it is not; and 
56
 I pledge my life, on the truth of what I say—and further;  follow
 strictly the directions  that will be given, and you will get  well.
 On that also I would not be afraid to pledge my life."  By this
 time, the several members of the family had pressed close around
 the J>ed; when, looking up at them, the physician perceived com-
 parative brightness in each countenance, and the mother and an
 elder sister shedding tears of joy.
   The sequel is soon told.  From indisposition, real or pretended,
 the family  physician did not again visit his patient, who, under the
 prescription and attendance of her non-contagionist, soon recov-
 ered her health; and no other member of the family sickened.
   But all the evils  of a  belief in pestilential contagion are not yet
 recited.  Many individuals, after having passed through a disease
 accounted  contagious,  and entered on a state of convalescence,
 have sunk  and died, from fatigue and famine, under their wasting
 and fruitless exertions  to attain food  and a  place of shelter and
 rest.   Why?  Because, in their own dwellings, all was destitu-
 tion;  and,  from a dread of them, as  repositories  of  contagion,
 they were shut out from the dwellings of others, avoided as lazars,
 whose atmospheres were deadly, and denied subsistence.  Shall
 I be told that these are  extreme cases, which very rarely occur?
 That they  are rare in our own country, is fortunately true.   But,
 that they  are  so elsewhere, is  not.   In the late  epidemics of
 Spain, they were  disgracefully common; and events of the kind
 added immensely to the  mortality of cholera, in its passage through
 Europe.   Under convalescence from  both  complaints,  patients
 were not only denied sustenance, but murderously shot down, in
 their attempts to escape from their places of confinement, to pro-
 cure food,  and breathe  a purer air.   So have  hundreds  been,
 who, not yet attacked by the disease,  were endeavoring to pass
 through sanitary cordons, from infected towns or cities, to places
 of health.
  That events like these often took place,  during the  numerous
plagues, that have visited England and other parts of Europe, is
matter  of history;  and,  were London now, or any other large
and populous town in the British empire, to be deeply ravaged by
a pestilential  disease,  many of  them would take place again. 
i)i
Imagination can scarcely figure  to us a scene of greater distress
and  horror, than a general  pestilence in London  would  create,
under the influence of a dread of contagion.   From the prevailing
panic, business would be suspended,  and the people of the coun-
try would cease to carry in the requisite supplies  of  provision;
the poor and laboring classes, who have rarely a day's subsistence
ahead, would thus  be deprived  of employment  and food in the
city; and, were they  to pass out of it, they would be driven back
and  perhaps  massacred; or, every door and hand of charity being
closed against them,  famine would be their lot, and the  hedges
and  open fields their dwelling.   Thus would exposure and pri-
vation unite with pestilence, in the work of destruction.   Scenes
of this description occurred in several of the  cities  of Spain, that
were visited by fevers deemed contagious, at an  early period in
the present century.
   There are still other grounds, on which a  belief in contagion
injures those who are not yet sick.  It is a source of constant and
debilitating apprehension to them.   Mankind  have a deeper dread
of pestilential contagion, than of any other kind of poison.  When
told that the virus of plague is in the  atmosphere around them, in
the form of a pestilential constitution united  to common malaria,
they do not fairly realize the view presented to them, and  are not
fully sensible of their danger.  They breathe freely and refresh-
ingly; and the  atmosphere appears to them as pure as common.
No visible source of danger  presents itself;  and they  are there-
fore comparatively free from dread.   But they can see  the bodies
of  the sick; and, if induced to believe that  they are the  source
of the fatal miasm, their terror is awakened,  and acts  as  an ex-
citing cause of the disease.   Hence the sight  of a corpse, or even
of a passing bier and coffin, has often produced  an attack  of pes-
tilence, which, but for the fright, would not have occurred.  Nor
is this all.    As already stated, the dread of contagion prevents
the inhabitants of cities and towns supposed to be infected, from
receiving supplies of wholesome food.   They become debilitated,
therefore, by scanty fare, and a  kind of aliment that does not suit
them.   The condition of their systems thus produced, increases
greatly their liability to the complaint, and diminishes, in an equal
ratio, their capability to contend with it,  when  it  attacks them.
             8 
58
The necessary result is, a marked augmentation of disease and
death.
  A belief in contagion proves a further misfortune to the well,
by  uprooting or paralyzing, for the time, their finest and most
amiable feelings and affections, and giving an ascendency to their
selfishness and fears.   Not only does it  silence the calls of be-
nevolence and the dictates of justice, it  freezes up the fountain
of friendship and domestic attachment.   Were not effects of this
description produced by it, men would not, as they often do, de-
sert their families, friends, and fellow-beings, when suffering from
the disease.   That the  fearless, high-minded, and  philanthropic
few do not act thus, is true, and deserves to be recorded to their
honor.  But, that, regardless of the claims of humanity, and ac-
tuated alone, by an ignominious selfishness, the multitude usually
seek safety  in  flight, cannot be denied, however  deeply the act
may disgrace them.
   But the most extensively calamitous effects of a belief in pes-
tilential contagion remain  to be mentioned.   They are those pro-
duced by the operation of  Sanitary and Quarantine  Laws;  the
latter being  intended as a  protection from pestilence by sea, and
the former by land.   Each of them merits  a brief examination.
   To the multiplied evils of Quarantine establishments  a passing
reference was made, in  the commencement of this essay.   It was
there represented, that  the laws  prescribing  their erection  and
administration (the  product of dark and superstitious times) as-
suming an  unlimited  control  over life, liberty,  and property,
at the discretion of ignorant and rapacious officers, are arbitrary
beyond all  others,  and incompatible  alike with the  rights of in-
dividuals  and communities, and  the spirit  of free governments.
In the execution of those laws, founded in error,  and framed  for
selfish and narrow purposes, revolting enormities have been often
committed.   Not only have thousands  of persons, suspected of
contagion, been  sickened and destroyed, by tyrannical and need-
 less confinement in foul and loathsome places, under the influence
 of depressing passions, unwholesome food, and  other  grievous
 and wasting privations;  in their attempts to escape from the power
 of their oppressors,  not  a few of them have  been slain—some
 inhumanly  broken  on  the  rack.  Nor is this  all.  Under  the 
59
same unsparing system  of cruelty and  ruin, suspected vessels
have been sunk, burnt, or  driven to sea, in  a condition of dis-
tress, and ultimately lost, with their crews and cargoes.  One of
these instances of atrocity  occurred not  many years ago in  the
Baltic.   To the correctness  of this detail, the history of Quar-
antines  abundantly testifies; and the darkness and strength of the
picture  might  be increased,  without  any violation being com-
mitted on truth.  Nor is the mischief produced by this misnamed
sanitary system of  limited extent.  All  commercial nations feel
it;  the more oppressively,  as  Great Britain,  the Queen of com-
merce,  has  been so long and deeply  concerned in the enforce-
ment of it.   In thousands  of instances, have bankruptcies and
ruin been produced, even  in remote places, from Quarantine
measures, causelessly  and rigidly  carried into effect, in conse-
quence of an eruption of  pestilence  in  seats of commerce.   I
repeat,  that of all these  assertions, history  furnishes matter of
proof, were I at liberty  to adduce it.
   Shall I be told that Quarantine  regulations are  now enforced
with more mildness and  discretion, and less injury to trade  and
commerce  than formerly?   True ; they are so, especially in the
United States,  Great Britain,  and  France.  And  what  is the
cause of this?   An increase of knowledge on the subject of them.
And in proportion as that  knowledge shall be further increased,
will Quarantine institutions be reduced, until not a vestige of them
shall remain.   In Italy,  Spain, and other less enlightened  and
liberal portions of Europe, the evil  continues, with  but  little
"mitigation.   Quarantine  laws  are  executed  there,  with  but a
slight abatement of their primitive tyranny.   The reason has been
already assigned.   Those  nations,  as  nations, are but limitedly
versed  in the laws  of  nature; and the governments, under which
they suffer, are nearly as ignorant and despotic now, as they were
at the beginning of the seventeenth  century.  But,  as science
shall enlighten  them, will their  Quarantines  go down, until,  by
the force of truth, they shall be finally demolished.   They are as
 directly at  war with reason and common sense, as are battle, fire,
and water ordeals, to decide on innocence  or  guilt,  and  award
justice.   Indeed they are  all  of the same family—the offspring of
the same dark  and superstitious condition  of the  human  mind, 
60
 and destined to extinction by the  same  means—the  disclosure
 and diffusion of knowledge.   Quarantine institutions can no more
 bear, for any length of time, without being demolished, the light
 that is opening on them, than an inflamed eye can tolerate, with-
 out pain,  the  full  blaze of the mid-day sun.   Descendants  and
 nurselings of an intellectual night, intellectual day  will certainly
 destroy them.
   A question of much moment is now to be  considered.   What
 good have Quarantines done, to balance the immeasurable amount
 of their mischief ?   I answer, None; and their advocates are chal-
 lenged  to disprove the  assertion.    Those  establishments  are
 sources of unqualified evil,  as every  establishment, founded in
 error, necessarily  must be.   I mean,  that they do mischief ex-
 clusively, so far as their measures to prevent the transportation
 of pestilential contagion from one place to another are concerned.
 Truth alone is  productive of good.   Every institution built  and
 administered on false principles, tends to evil, by a law as posi-
 tive,  as that by which ponderous bodies tend to the centre.  This
 position no  one will deny.   And  I  trust it has been shown,  that
 every principle, connected with Quarantines, is radically unsound.
 Those institutions  have never  excluded pestilence from a town
 or city, nor saved a single life, to compensate for the thousands
 they have wantonly destroyed.  To speak more definitely.
   The  British Government has long  maintained  Quarantines in
 London,  Liverpool, Bristol, Portsmouth, Rochester, Falmouth
 Milford, and Hull.  Between those ports and  the whole country
 of the Levant,  and indeed every oriental place of business, visit-
 ed by plague, an extensive  intercourse by  commerce has been
 constantly maintained.  The suspected cargoes that have entered
 them,  and been opened, examined, and  familiarly handled, are
 innumerable.   Yet,  for nearly two hundred  years, no opener,
 inspector, or cleanser of reputedly infected  goods  in them  has
 ever  sickened  of plague;  nor has a single patient, affected  with
 that disease, been received into their Lazarettos.   This is history.
 Yet, itis repeated,  that, within the above period, hundreds,  prob-
ably  thousands of ships from eastern  places, with  "foul bills,"
have entered the designated ports, and discharged their cargoes.
Do not these facts prove, as far as a negative can be proved, the 
61
non-contagious nature, and non-importability of plague;  and, of
course, the uselessness of Quarantines,  as respects  that disease ?
If not, I should be gratified at being informed, wherein they fail.
Were plague contagious, it seems  impossible,  that,  in  such a
length of time, and under such broad and uninterrupted intercourse
with the Levant, and the east generally, some of the poison of it
should not have found its  way  into  the British ports.   Suppose
the complaint guarded against were small-pox, instead of plague;
no precaution, that wisdom might devise,  and vigilance  execute,
could have  prevented it  from appearing, perhaps every  year,
among the crews of foul ships, or  the  openers and examiners of
infected  goods.   Had the persons  employed  in discharging,
opening, and airing suspected cargoes been attacked  by plague;
or, had cases of that disease been  admitted  into the Lazarettos,
from on  board of infected  ships, and the  towns notwithstanding
escaped—had events of this sort happened,  testimony in favor of
Quarantines  might  have been derived  from them.  But,  of the
events which did happen, no such use can be made.   They only
show, that, for nearly two  hundred years, there has not been im-
ported into Great Britain, notwithstanding the extent of her com-
merce with oriental countries, and the number of ships pronounced
unclean, that have entered her ports, as much of the contagion of
plague, as could communicate the  complaint to a single individ-
ual.  And in the  United States, though they have also had some
commerce with the  countries  of the east, a case of plague has
never been  seen, except in the modified  form of yellow fever.
Nor can it be made to appear even probable, that all the parade
and cost of their Quarantine establishments have ever saved from
plague, a single seaport of France, Spain, Italy, or any other part
of Europe.   It is time, then,  high time, that the  curtain should
drop, and  this farce of contagion, of four or five hundred years
duration, be  ended.  Though in harmony with the views  of the
fifteenth, sixteenth,  and  seventeenth  centuries, when  physical
science was in its early infancy, and imagination had usurped the
seat of judgment, it is as unfit for the nineteenth, in which a much
sounder  philosophy prevails, as any  of  the fantasies of the Dark
Ages. 
62
   The  most disastrous effects, however, of a belief in the con-
tagiousness of plague are yet to be cited.  They are those which
result from attempts, by  sanitary arrangements, to prevent the
disease  from spreading by  land.  And they have been, in many
cases, as shocking  as the calamities of  war.  The object of the
arrangements is, to confine the  inhabitants of sickly towns, cities,
and districts  within their own limits, and prevent the inhabitants
of other places from entering them.  And the means employed
for these purposes, are lines and cordons of armed men.
   The  uselessness of these  arrangements has never failed to be
demonstrated, wherever they have been tried.   The experiment
has already failed.   In no instance have they ever prevented the
spreading of a pestilential disease to its  natural limits—the limits
I mean prescribed to it by time and place, according to the prin-
ciples heretofore laid down—nor can they ever do so.  The rea-
son is plain.   The miasm of the complaint is in the atmosphere,
and no  bodies of soldiers can  impede its march.  As well may
they attempt to grasp  the hurricane, and stop  it in its  career.
Every effect of these measures, therefore, is pure mischief.   To
be particular.
   A pestilential disease begins  in the lowest and foulest  section
of a large city,  situated on a river,  or some other body of navi-
gable water.  At first, it occupies but a small space.  Around this
a cordon of troops  is stationed, to prevent all egress and  ingress
of both  the sick and the well.   But this does not prevent either
the egress of miasm, or the generation of it  in other places.   In
twenty-four or forty-eight hours, or  perhaps  less, the disease  ap-
pears without the cordon.  The troops, increased in number, and
falling back, enlarge their circle.  The next day, or the next but
one, they perceive, to their surprise, that the complaint,  having
again  passed  them, is once more in their rear.   The disease con-
tinuing  thus to advance, and  they to retreat, it at  length drives
them  out of the city, after having attacked and destroyed  a num-
ber of themselves.   This  is  no fancy-piece, but  a  picture of an
event that has often occurred.
  Meantime  the inhabitants of the city, less at  liberty  than  the
disease, cannot pass the cordon unseen, and are prevented from
doing it openly.   Inhumanly confined to the  pestilential spot, 
63
where they  inhale, at  every breath, empoisoned air, instead of
being permitted to remove,  for safety, to a healthier atmosphere,
a depressing terror and sense of desperation seize them, and they
become, in  numbers, vastly augmented by these causes, easy and
certain victims to the malady.   Fresh and wholesome aliment, on
such an occasion essential to their health, is withheld from them,
for a twofold  reason.  A wide-spread panic has taken from most
of the  inhabitants of the  adjacent country all disposition to bring
provisions to  the place; and  the sanitary cordon  prohibits the
entrance of the few, who, from motives of humanity, or the love
of  gain, are willing to enter.   Thus  does scanty and  unsound
food unite with a pestiferous atmosphere, to swell the calamity.
   From causes such as these, the late epidemic of Barcelona,  in
Spain, increased to the appalling pitch of eighteen fold,  in seven
days after the imposition of the sanitary restrictions.  The mala-
dy, moreover did not begin to decline, until the month of October,
though the prohibitions had been laid in July—a memorable proof
of the folly  that  devised, and the madness that continued them!
   Of the epidemic  of Tortosa, in 1821,  the same may be said.
The sanitary  restrictions were inordinately rigid.   The city was
surrounded by  powerful  and  vigilant cordons  of troops.   All
travellers from sickly  places  were prohibited from entering  the
gates.   Yet,  as  if in derision of this pageant,  the  pestilence in-
vaded the city thus garrisoned against it—I should rather say, it
sprung up in  it—and the mortality was frightful.
   At a previous period, (I think in 1804,) Gibraltar had presented
 a similar spectacle.  In  consequence of  a  pestilential disease
prevailing at  no  great distance in Spain, and also on the Barbary
 coast,  every pass leading into the town and fortress, was vigilantly
guarded.   But  to  no purpose.  The Rock,  which no armed
force could carry, was invaded by pestilence; and the devasta-
tion was terrible—the more so, from the strictness, with which
the place was barricaded.   If I mistake not, the deaths amounted
 to six thousand, in a  population of eighteen  or twenty thousand.
    In the Great Plague of  London,  the  regulations adopted for
 checking its  progress, proved equally  destructive.   The mor-
 tality was perceived to be  so much  augmented, by shutting up
 sickly houses, and laying restrictions on sickly  neighborhoods, 
64
 that the practice, if not abandoned, was greatly mitigated.   Were
 it necessary, further facts, testifying to the same effect with the
 foregoing ones, might be cited in abundance.   But, to reflecting
 minds, those adduced will not, I trust, fail to prove satisfactory.
   In no other place, and on no  occasion,  of which I have  any
 knowledge, have sanitary restrictions been more successful.   In
 his efforts to set bounds to a pestilential epidemic, man has al-
 ways given proof of his impotence.   He resembles Canute, by
 the  seaside, forbidding the surf to soil  his  sandals.  He  is at-
 tempting an impossibility; because  he is in conflict with a law
 of nature.   I mean, that his success is impossible, through the
 instrumentality of  the  restrictive measures  usually pursued.   I
 shall  say, hereafter, that, to  no inconsiderable extent, he  may
 succeed, and shall  endeavor,  at  the  same time, to  indicate  the
 means  with  which he  is  to  accomplish  the  important work.
 When given in detail, those means  will be found to be included
 chiefly, not in armed cordons, or barbarous  Quarantines, but in
 CLEANLINESS.
   In  the United States, all sanitary  arrangements, to arrest  the
 progress  of yellow fever, have proved equally fruitless  with
 those referred to, in  other countries.  The complaint has never
 felt them.   Having once invaded one of our cities, it has always
 set human opposition at  defiance.  I mean, in its march and du-
 ration.   It has spread, and obstinately maintained its ground, un-
 til overpowered by cool  weather.  Yet I have seen it opposed
 by sanitary regulations,  as wise and vigorous as contagionists
 could devise and carry into effect.
   Were plague and yellow fever the offspring of human conta-
 gion,  these  things would not be  true.  Their progress might be
 arrested, by rigidly separating the sick from the well—a measure
 easily accomplished.   Small-pox furnishes  proof of this.   That
 complaint,  when propagated only by contagion, unassisted  by a
 variolous constitution of the  atmosphere, can  be stopt,  in its
 career, and be certainly prevented from overruning a city.  The
attempt has  been often successfully made.   Pestilence could be
also staid, in its  course,  more easily, I doubt not, than small-
pox, were it not an atmospherical disease.  Being such, however,
and arising from the influence of season and  weather, nothing can 
65
arrest and extinguish  it,  but a counter influence, from the same
source.
  But perhaps the most signal failure of sanitary  restrictions,
which the world has witnessed, was in the case of cholera, in its
late passage  over Europe.  Not only was  that  pestilence  not
stayed, by those  restrictions;  as if in scorn of all that man could
do, in opposition to its progress,  it seemed, in many instances,
to invade cities, towns, and territories, "with a certainty propor-
tioned to the exertions made  to exclude it.   Unquestionably it
often spared  places not guarded, and devastated those that were.
Prussia and Austria,  contrasted with each other, are in proof of
this.   The former nation guarded itself resolutely and vigilantly,
at every pass and point, yet suffered severely from cholera.  The
latter cannot be said, as  a nation, to have guarded  itself at all.
Notwithstanding  this, its  sufferings, from the complaint, were
comparatively light.
   This brief account of the pernicious effects  of sanitary restric-
tions, in times of pestilence, cannot be more fittingly closed, than
by the following picture of the evils and horrors they produced,
in Opiton, a village of the  palatinate of Sandomir.   The repre-
sentation of the scene, about  to be given, is  a  translation from
the "  Gazette Medicale de Paris, par Barriere de Boismont."
The chief of the palatinate having learnt,  by letter,  that cholera
was committing frightful ravages, in the village referred to,  ap-
pointed a commission to inquire  into the facts,  and devise  and
apply some  means  of relief.    The following  is  the account of
their visit, of the deplorable condition of the  village, when they
 entered it, and the successful issue  of their efforts to relieve it.
   " Having  reached the borders of Opiton,  the Commissioners
 found the whole neighboring  population in arms, and all com-
 munication with  the place cut off.   The  dread  of  contagion
having become  general, no one  was permitted to  leave  the vil-
 lage.   When the Commissioners entered it,  the most frightful and
 calamitous spectacle was presented to them.   Business was at an
 end, the shops were closed,  and the silence of desolation every
 where  prevailed, except when broken by sobs, lamentations, and
 groans.  Not a  house  could  be found,  that  did  not contain,
               9 
66
 mingled together in dismal assemblage, the sick,  the dying, and
 the dead.  Already  were want  and despair brooding in every
 dwelling, and painted in gloom and  ghastliness on every counte-
 nance.   The first care of the Commissioners  was to reanimate
 the courage,  revive the spirits,  and reinstate the hopes  of the
 drooping inhabitants.    Relief being  liberally  administered  by
 them, consolation  was felt by  the people,  brighter prospects
 opened  to them, and, in a short  time, a remarkable amendment
 was perceptible.  The Commissioners next addressed themselves
 to the authorities and inhabitants  of the vicinity, convinced them
 that the  disease was not contagious, and  removed their  appre-
 hensions on that subject.   The  customary communications with
 the village were consequently renewed, the  markets were again
 supplied with  provisions, confidence in all its  forms was restored,
 and an abatement in the violence  and mortality of the complaint
 was sudden and striking."
   Such  were  the disasters of imposing sanitary regulations, and
 the relief derived from  removing them.  The contrast,  though
 deep and strong, is true to nature; and similar views might be cor-
 rectly given of the effects of such  measures, in other places.
 Cholera, though a fatal scourge to  the world, will, through the
wise and beneficent dispensation under which we live, be pro-
 ductive  of consequences favorable alike to science and humanity.
 Besides being instrumental in throwing  much light on the  prac-
tice of physic, it will prove highly influential  in extinguishing the
belief in  pestilential contagion,  and  bringing into disrepute  the
 Quarantine and  Sanitary establishments,  that have hitherto  ex-
isted.  No previous disease has so  clearly demonstrated the fal-
lacy of the notion, and  the uselessness of all  practical measures
founded on it.  It is thus that,  in the  faultless economy  of our
globe, and doubtless in  the entire government  of the  Universe,
exclusive evil has no existence.   In  every occurrence, however
calamitous it may at first appear, the  evil is but seeming and tran-
sitory, while the good educed from it is positive and everlasting.
Hence the certain and cheering prospect, that the tendency  of
all things is to ultimate perfection.   Nor will  an exception to this
be found in medicine.   All that is fallacious and mischievous in
it will be rejected, and nothing but truth and  usefulness retained. 
67
The time of this consummation may be distant; but it is approach-
ing, and will arrive, as certainly, as that  wisdom, goodness, and
power preside over creation.
   An objection urged against the foregoing views  of Quarantines
must now be noticed.   Great Britain, France, and other parts of
Europe have had a long respite from plague.  Often visited by
that complaint, a few centuries ago, they are free from  it now.
Is not this exemption, say my opponents, owing to the improved
condition of their  Quarantines?   I answer,  No.  Quarantines
have no share  in the work of protection.    They were  more
rigid and unsparing, at the time when plague visited Europe, than
they are now.  The  exemption is attributable to the improved
condition of society in other respects.   In plain  terms, it  is at-
tributable to increased cleanliness, with its concomitant  com-
forts.   If a  better diet, better cooking, and an amended  general
regimen, including less intemperance, and more suitable clothing,
contribute somewhat toward the result, it is  comparatively little.
Increased purity, in the  most  extensive   signification of the
term, is the chief cause  of the immunity enjoyed.   That filth
produces plague,  and  cleanliness prevents  it, is as plain and posi-
tive a law of nature, as that warmth promotes, and cold  checks
the progress of vegetation.   In Europe generally, but especially
in Great Britain and France, towns and cities are much cleaner,
and lands much more thoroughly  drained and cultivated  now,
than they were a century or two ago.   Hence  arises their ex-
emption from pestilential complaints.  Nor is this the only benefit
they derive  from the improvements referred to.   Owing to the
same causes, they are more  exempt than  formerly from all sorts
of malignant fever.   In  confirmation of these  views, many facts
and exemplifications might be adduced.   What renders a town,
city, or small district  of  country healthy or sickly, will, if suffi-
ciently  extended, do  the same  to a nation.   The two following
examples therefore are highly important,  being of universal ap-
plication, and testifying conclusively to the  position I am main-
taining.
   The city  of Bourdeaux, when formerly surrounded by marshes,
and filthy  internally, was  extremely unhealthy.  The  fevers
which annually visited it, always severe, were at  times pestilen- 
                             68

rial.   But the cleansing of the streets, and the draining and cul-
tivation of the marshes, and of the country around it  generally,
have rendered  it healthy.   It is now as free from  pestilential
complaints as any other populous city in  France.
   La ville-neuve les Avignon, stands on a branch of the Rhone,
and was once renowned for its healthfulness and beauty.   Stran-
gers resorted to it,  to breathe its fine air, and enjoy its delightful
prospects.  But the embankment of the river giving way, and the
water escaping from its channel,  the environs of  the  village be-
came a marsh;  and  it  is now shunned as a place of sickness.  For
similar reasons, the Pontine marshes near Rome, once the garden
spot of Italy, and perhaps of the world, are at  present uninhabita-
ble.   The  improvement in the healthfulness of Calcutta,  and
other places on the Hoogley and the Ganges, is  attributable to
causes  of the same  class.
   Instances of this  sort  are innumerable.   Let  the cities 01
Europe then become now as foul, and the lands  as  marshy and
uncultivated, as they  were formerly, and plague will revisit them,
though their Quarantines, be trebled in strictness, and all inter-
course with the Levant be prohibited.
   Suppose Asia and  Egypt to be the birth-place  of  small-pox,
the nations of Europe unacquainted with inoculation and vaccina-
tion, as means of protection  from it, and still connected with the
countries of the east, as extensively and closely  as they are at
present.   Under these  circumstances,  could Quarantine estab-
lishments secure them  from that disease?  Impossible.  Every
Lazaretto would he a small-pox Infirmary, its wards never empty;
and, in merchandise, and the clothes of travellers,  the  virus of
the  disease would be conveyed  into the interior, and there pro-
duce its  deleterious effects.  No precautions could prevent this
 result.   Civilization, cleanliness, and refinement  may give  pro-
 tection against the generation of certain diseases, but not against
 the propagation of those that are contagious.
   In all inquiries into  this subject, it should be borne in mind,
 that the  intercourse  between Europe and the countries of the
 East is much  wider and freer now  than it was two or three cen-
 turies  ago.  In the same ratio, therefore, would plague, were it
 contagious, be more certainly introduced into European seaports. 
69
I mean especially, that it would find its way, in merchandise, in-
fected persons, or  infected clothing, into the Lazarettos.   But,
as already stated, it does not enter them at all, nor has it appear-
ed in any British  Lazaretto  for nearly two centuries.  It is not
therefore a disease to be transported, by contagion, from one coun-
try to another.  To contend, as some do, that it  is semi-conta-
gious—propagable  in a vitiated atmosphere, though not in a pure
one—is, as already observed, a mere trick in sophistry, unworthy
of notice.   It is an empty  assertion,  unsupported  by a title of
evidence.  Yet, were the proposition true, it might be thus satis-
factorily replied to—remove all  filth,  whose effluvia might  adul-
terate the air, and the semi-poison of plague becomes harmless,
and Quarantines of  no use.   Cleanliness is a competent safeguard
without them.  In truth, to admit  that pestilence is but " semi-
contagious "—" contagious  only under certain circumstances,"
is tantamount  to an entire surrender of the question.   It is an ac-
knowledgment of defeat, in the contest about the contagiousness
of plague.  But  this acknowledgment, and  the retreat from the
ground contended  fop, instead of being open and manly,  is tor-
 tuous and furtive,  and therefore not creditable to the vanquished
party.   When a disputant is convicted of error, his refuge lies
 in ingenuous  submission.
   Will it be said that I have been condemning institutions which
 no longer exist, inasmuch as none now impose  a  detention  of
 exactly  forty days on  suspected  and sickly vessels?  I reply,
 that this objection  would be a quibble, unworthy of the discussion
 in which I am engaged.   My remarks have been directed against
 all detention, on account of contagion, whatever may be its du-
 ration.   Whether it last  but one day or extend to forty,  it  is
 equally faulty and indefensible, as relates to  principle and tenden-
 cy,  though not as respects the amount of mischief it actually pro-
 duces.   As   already shown,  the practice originated in error and
 superstition,  has been perpetuated by prejudice  and selfish pas-
 sions, is highly pernicious in its effects, and possesses not a sin-
 gle redeeming quality.  It should  be  therefore abolished.
   Let it not  be imagined, however, that I would  admit into port,
 all vessels, at all  times, without examination or detention.  Far
 from it.   In  warm weather,  especially, no vessel should be per- 
70
tnitted to enter,  whose foul condition or damaged cargo may aid
in vitiating the atmosphere of the place, until the whole shall have
undergone a thorough cleansing.  True plague, and other  forms
of pestilential disease are of atmospherical origin.   The great
object, therefore, of sanitary establishments should be  to keep the
atmosphere in a pure  condition.  But  little else is  required of
them;  and that can be effected only by  the enforcement of clean-
liness.  But, among the  sources of filth and atmospherical cor-
ruption, in maritime cities, and those situated on lakes and navi-
gable rivers, foul ships and damaged cargoes are justly enumera-
ted.   They should be therefore excluded, until rendered innocent
by purification.   The mode of effecting this must be adapted to
the nature of the articles to be  purified, and the depth of their
contamination.   In all cases and kinds of cleansing, however, the
only means to be confidently relied on are,  pure air, pure water,
soap, sand, brushes, and sponges or cloths to wipe with.   These
agents, skilfully applied, are competent to the cleansing  of all
articles worth preserving;  and fire alone can purify the  rest.
   Next to these modes of cleansing foul ships, come painting and
whitewashing them, which are however but substitutes for cleanli-
ness.  They cover  impurities,  but  do  not necessarily destroy
them.   In fumigation with acids, chlorides, and other  gaseous and
odorous substances, I have but little confidence—or rather none
at all.  The process is,  at best, of doubtful effect,  and  should
never be resorted to, except  when nothing better can  be done.
There is  reason to believe, that fumigation with those irritating
articles has often done mischief.  Indeed it  is scarcely conceiva-
ble how such pungent gases, inhaled by weak and irritable lungs,
can prove innocent.
   The period and process requisite for the  purification  of a ship
and cargo depend altogether  on the circumstances of the  case.
The duration  of their detention, therefore, being  very much a
matter of experience and judgment in  each particular  instance,
cannot be specified.  Nor is it  necessary that  it should be, pro-
vided the business be conducted by men of intelligence.   In no
case, however, need it be very protracted.   But my object being
not to enter into  details, but to state general principles,  I shall
dwell on this topic no longer. 
71
   In every sanitary  port-establishment, a hospital should be in-
cluded, as well as suitable buildings, grounds, and apparatus for
cleansing and storing goods and merchandise.  Into the former
should be received all sick persons, arriving on board of ships,
and sailors who may sicken in port; not because  they would en-
danger the health of the city, by being lodged and attended  else-
where; but because their accommodations and chance of recovery
might not be so good.   The healthy portions of the crews  and
passengers of sickly  ships may go on shore immediately,  free
from all restraint, care being taken that their persons and clothes
are clean.  No filth, however small in quantity, should be  con-
veyed into  the city  from without.  Under the best regulated
police, every crowded place of commerce has filth enough of its
own.   Let ships,  cargoes,  bedding, persons, and wearing  ap-
parel be  thus purified, and  all other necessary measures be  pur-
sued, to  enforce domestic cleanliness, and prevent the formation
of malaria, and the dread of imported pestilence  may  be safely
dismissed.
   A few general remarks shall close this essay.  The doctrine of
febrile contagiousness, considered  in the extent to which  it is
carried, is one  of the most unfounded and mischievous, in medi-
cal science.  To the injury of the  Profession, as well as of the
sick and the healthy, the quality of communicableness is attributed
to many diseases, of whose nature and character it forms no  part.
When a  febrile  complaint  attacks a number of persons,  in the
same  house or neighborhood, about the same time, or in succes-
sion,  it is too much the fashion to pronounce it contagious, with-
out adverting to the fact, or duly weighing it, that the  sick  have
all been exposed to a common deleterious cause.   On this ground,
even intermittents and remittents have been deemed contagious;
and dysentery is deemed so still.   So is typhus, by a great ma-
jority of the physicians of Christendom.   Of influenza the same
has been  true;  and the belief in its contagiousness, though much
reduced  in its  sphere, within the  present  century, is still  ex-
tensive.   Pulmonary consumption has been declared contagious,
because several individuals of the same family have died of it, in
succession.   In this opinion even the late Dr. Rush concurred,
because  he had often known a man to be  attacked by the disease 
72
 first, and then his wife;  or the converse.   In these cases,  his
 belief was, that the one might have been infected, by the breath
 of the other.   I am not sure that the Doctor did not abandon this
 opinion,  before  his  death.   That the  several  complaints just
 named are free from contagion,  might  be easily made to appear,
 were it admissible here to enter on the discussion.
   As  respects measles and  scarlet fever, so universal  and posi-
 tive is the belief in their contagiousness, that to  express a doubt
 on the subject, is hazardous to reputation.  It is received as evi-
 dence of a heresy in medicine,  the result of thoughtlessness,  su-
 perficialness, or wild speculation.   Yet I venture to say, that the
 communicabihty  of those complaints, from the sick to  the well,
 by means of a secreted poison, is far  from being proved.   Nor
 do I hesitate to add,  that the weight of sound and accurate testi-
 mony  appears to give the preponderance to the opposite opinion.
 I know of but two febrile complaints unequivocally proved to be
 contagious—small-pox, and kine-pox; the latter being communi-
 cable only by inoculation.   The hypothesis  of the contagiousness
 of all others, (I mean  fevers,) if not assumed without evidence,
 rests on evidence  wholly  inconclusive—such as,  in  the  accurate
 sciences,  would be held inadmissible.   On these several points,
 I may  possibly offer a few further thoughts, at a future time.
   Finally; febrile contagion, like other poisons, having a charac-
 ter and permanent properties of its own,  must produce its effects
 independently of  all adventitious auxiliaries.   Semi-contagious-
 ness, therefore, as already intimated, is a term without a meaning.
 No disease, moreover, is  contagious,  which is limited, in its pre-
 valence,  by time  or place—which exists, I mean,  only in  given
 situations, and  under  given conditions of the atmosphere.   But
 plague and yellow  fever  have been  shown to be complaints of
 this description.   They are controlled by  temporary and local
 influences.  Hence their destitution  of  contagion, and  the want
 of wisdom in governments, in establishing and maintaining against
 them,  expensive and pernicious  systems  of Quarantine—institu-
 tions, which, in time to come, will be known only  as  matters of
 history, and will be quoted by posterity, as evidence of the error
 and superstition,  which had  once held dominion over the minds
of their forefathers. 
          i THOUGHTS

                      o*siw*

<&mvmti m anil otJjtt Sauftatg &Qi(#k*/
BEING AN ESSAY WHICH RECEIVED THE
PRIZE OF THE BOYLSTON MEDICAL COMMITTEE,
HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
IN AUGUST, 1834.
BY CHARLES CALDWELL, M. D.
'Veritas atque utilitas antiquitati prceponendoe sint.
COPY RIGHT SECURED.
        BOSTON:
MARSH, CAPEN &. LYON.
          1834. 
72
"" £■* '  I
first, and th-  ''
i
V-
-^
>
^&r*
rSr^: 
      MARSH,  CAPEN  &LYON,

133 Washington St. Boston, & Concord, JY.Mf.

              PUBLISH THE FOLLOWING

       Til&WJl]B2ilS   is dj) (DI& S»

  PHRENOLOGY, OR THE  DOCTRINE  OF MENTAL PHE-
NOMENA, in 2 vols., 8vo.—Vol. I, Physiological Part; Vol. II, Philo-
sophical Part, with Plates; Third American  Edition, By J. G. Spur-
zhiem, M. D.
  This work gives a full view of the science of Phrenology, and fur-
nishes numerous facts illustrative of human nature.

  PHRENOLOGY IN CONNEXION WITH PHYSIOGNOMY. Il-
lustrative  of Character, with thirty five plates; • By J. G. Spurzheim.
To which is prefixed a Biography of the Author, By Nahum Capen. One
Vol., 8vo.  Second American Edition.

  SPURZHEIM'S WORK ON INSANITY; with  an  appendix^ By
A. Brigham, M. D.  One vol., 8vo.

  SPURZHEIM'S WORK ON EDUCATION, third American Edition.
One vol., 12mo.

  SPURZHEIM'S  CATECHISM ON THE NATURAL  LAWS
OF MAN. One vol., 18mo.

  SPURZHEIM'S OUTLINES OF PHRENOLOGY.  Being a man-
ual of reference for the  Marked Bust.

  SPURZHEIM'S ANSWER TO GORDON. One vol., 12mo.

  SPURZHEIM'S  ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN, WITH A GEN-
ERAL VIEW OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.  With an appendix
with 18 plates, improved. One vol., 8vo

  DR. ANDREW COMBE, ON MENTAL DERANGEMENT. One
vol.,  8vo.

  COMBE'S PHRENOLOGY.  Second  American,  from the third
London Edition, improved.
  LECTURES ON POPULAR EDUCATION.  By George  Combe.

  DR. CALDWELL,  ON PHYSICAL  EDUCATION. 
>W* ">•>";

-s.v  > >  >.^
»• "> '  3
X> > >J ■»-
at

5 >   3
> >;>r» -v*^ j>2J> -^-
  > 3> >   -.






3-1>  >S  ^-rt
-  >;.<-»  >>







  -   3 >:>



> »

■a?  * >  >  ^-<*«i >  »*-
^>^3  3 »^  >


. ^ 3  '

> 5, )  ) 3..

^ > 3^!»^

> jT i>-» ^ ^~SZ i *

^3 ^.'J  .^^  "

1'^ ^

'> > > ■

^K>' '»:  .>  :
^j^5^  ?>^