THE ROMANCE OF MEDICINE. 433 



properly called by others a question of life and death. We do not 

 mind Mr. Disraeli and his friends having a policy of sewage, but it is 

 essential that the policy should be accurate and enlightened. The advo- 

 cates of the contagion theory have no weakness for sewage, especially 

 in an olfactory point of view. They say, also, that it places disease 

 under the most favorable conditions for the consummation of its evil 

 mission. But they assei't, in opposition to former theories of the 

 Board of Health that has an unlimited command of print and pay 

 that sewage, in itself, does not breed fever and infection, unless it is 

 charged with specific ingredients of contamination. Infectious dis- 

 eases are only communicated by the virus of specific poison. Many 

 of us, in the course of the holiday season of the year, accumulate a 

 collection of instances on the subject. In the famous cities of the 

 Continent, and in exquisite Swiss villages, we have the most noisome 

 stinks and sights, yet we hear nothing of fever. In fact, it almost 

 seems a rule that, where Heaven throws the greatest beauty and mag- 

 nificence, man should exhibit the greatest abominations. Natural 

 beauty goes, like King Cophetua's beggar-maid, in rags. Clovelly, in 

 Devonshire, is the most romantic spot we know in the western land, 

 and, till recently, it was the most undisguisedly dirty. But all through 

 the west of England, and, indeed, we are afraid, all over the three 

 kingdoms, we shall find lovely villages that, despite their loveliness, 

 will give the utmost offence to sight and smell. Yet, for whole de- 

 cades of years, no infectious illness is heard of in these villages ; and 

 then, suddenly, fever or small-pox breaks out, and, to say the least of 

 it, simply decimates the humble inhabitants. The contagionists will 

 assert that the evil state of things was comparatively harmless until 

 charged with a specific virus. One fact bearing on the subject will be 

 fresh in the recollection of all readers. Many years ago, the Thames 

 began to stink horribly in the hot months. The law courts broke up, 

 the Houses of Parliament were saturated with chloride of lime, the 

 river steamers lost their traffic, and business-men went miles out of 

 their way, in order to avoid crossing a city bridge. " India is in re- 

 volt, and the Thames stinks," were the two national humiliations 

 bracketed by our severe friend "the intelligent foreigner." It so 

 happened, also, that a Thames waterman died of the cholera; and that 

 unfortunate waterman created the utmost consternation in the coun- 

 try. A frightful outbreak of cholera and fever was expected. But 

 nothing of the kind happened. The health of the metropolis was re- 

 markably good ; the death-rate below the average, especially in the 

 diseases supposed to result from poisonous emanations. There was 

 certainly a failure in the supposed connection between epidemics and 

 a bad sanitary state of things ; and the suggestion arises that we were 

 mercifully saved the introduction of some element that might have 

 wrought all the misery we dreaded. 



When the Prince of Wales was ill, we all of us, unhappily, ac- 



TOL. II. 28 



