432 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



coveries, the actual amount of disease is probably greater than ever it 

 was. The doctors are even quarrelling among themselves, whether 

 certain illnesses are contagious or non-contagious. There is no doubt 

 that scarlatina is contagious ; but, at the time of the illness of the 

 Prince of Wales, it was sharply debated whether typhoid fever was 

 infectious or not. Even the fact of such a discussion is hardly credit- 

 able, for it might have been thought that scientific men, by a scientific 

 induction of facts, could have set such a question at rest by this time. 

 But we feel quite certain, especially in days when people travel and 

 sojourn away from home, that no case of illness should be found to 

 exist which any opinion entitled to respect should consider infectious, 

 but it should be surrounded with safeguards, and so be saved from be- 

 coming the source of those terrible domestic tragedies with which we 

 are all so unhappily familiar. 



We have now brought our readers to a point to which we have 

 been working up in the course of this paper, a point of extreme prac- 

 tical importance and urgency, on which the opinions of the public and 

 their suffrages should be collected. We wish to draw more particular 

 attention to a subject which we have just lightly touched on, one 

 which we believe cannot be too much ventilated and discussed amonsr 

 general readers, and on which they are qualified to form an opinion, 

 and to take action upon it. The theory involved is extremely simple 

 and interesting, albeit strictly scientific ; but the practical importance 

 of it is enormous. Somewhere in the dim perspective many of us can 

 discern the promise of a golden age, when all curable accidents will 

 be cured, and all preventible diseases will be prevented. There can 

 be no doubt but a simple contagious disease is susceptible of being 

 stamped out. We stamped out the cattle-plague, and, if the plagues 

 of men touched the same obvious and immediate pecuniary interests 

 as the plagues of cattle, we might stamp out similar calamities among 

 human beings. To a certain extent the history of the small-pox shows 

 how much can be done this way. In the remarks we are about to 

 make we most especially acknowledge our obligations to Dr. William 

 Budd's writings and teachings on the subject, who has developed his 

 views, full of import to the happiness and well-being of humanity, 

 with immense ability and experience, and much literary skill. The 

 theory is, that any contagious disease can be eradicated ; or, at all 

 events, limited within a very slender area ; and that various diseases 

 are in reality contagious, such as typhoid fever and consumption, 

 where the ordinary medical and general mind does not admit the fact 

 of the contagiousness. If we resort to the primitive processes of 

 counting noses, or listening for the largest amount of shouting, we 

 shall decide against the theory ; but at present legitimate argument 

 and logical deduction appear to be in its favor. 



Mr. Disraeli's policy was lately denounced as a policy of sewage. 

 What has been called by some a policy of sewage, has been more 



