1825.] 
appearance than all the sanitary laws 
that ever were devised in divans or par- 
liaments, 
But, Sir, I am also.a believer in the 
position (See West. Rev. No. 6, p.514), 
that “ Typhus Feyer is plague modi- 
fied,” not indeed ‘‘by the climate” 
(for Ipresume our climate is pretty 
much the same now, as it was when it 
used to visit our island occasionally 
with such desolating and depopulating 
fury), but by the physically and socially 
improved condition of the soil and 
population “ of Great Britain.” And, 
by the way, from the few observations I 
have had the opportunities of making, 
of the thronged manufacturing and 
other populous towns and neighbour- 
hoods in which the typhus has, and in 
which it has not, made its frequent ap- 
earance, I am much disposed to think 
with all due deference to that sect of 
Malthusian philosophers, who con- 
ceive it to be necessary to the welfare, 
happiness and prosperity of the coun- 
try, that famine and pestilence should 
sometimes come, in aid of foreign and 
long-protracted wars, to keep down the 
population), that some further attention 
to the condition and accommodation of 
the labouring mass of the people might 
exterminate this demi-plague also : for 
I believe it will be found, that in those 
manufacturing districts, however popu- 
lous, where the great manufacturing 
proprietors have had the benevolent 
wisdom (for it would be difficult to say 
whether there is more prudence with 
respect to themselves, or benignity to- 
wards their dependents, in such pre- 
caution) to build convenient and sub- 
stantial cottages for the residence of 
their work-people, the typhus fever 
has seldom made its appearance ; while, 
in those where the throng of operatives 
remain huddled together, a family per- 
haps in every room, in narrow streets 
and alleys, or other wretched and un- 
ventilated residences, its recurrence is 
lamentably frequent. 
Tn one of those little scattered hamlets 
which, some years ago, had suddenly 
spread (or rather populated without 
sufficiently spreading) into a thronged 
and multitudinous town, by means of 
the extensive iron-works, &c. which 
sprung up there (I mean Myrthertydfil), 
at the time when I had some acquaint- 
ance and occasional intercourse with it, 
T have reason to know that this demi- 
plague, the Typhus, was apt to be rife 
enough: and a circumstance occurred, 
relative to it, which, as it seems to have 
some tendency to illustrate the subject 
. 
Doubts on the Contagion of the Plague. 
133 
under discussion, is the occasion of my 
present letter. 
I happened to have some business to 
transact at that place, at a time when 
the fever was prevalent there; and I 
took it home with me to my. distant 
residence, and lay confined with it for 
some weeks—how long I do not now 
remember—but it was long enough to 
reduce me to an appearance so spectre- 
like and cadaverous, that I do not re- 
member ever to have recoiled with so, 
much horror from any thing before or 
since beheld, as from the first sight of 
my pale, unearthed-like and emaciated 
form and features in the glass. 
But, let not the advocates of conta- 
gion suppose that they have in me, 
therefore, either an advocate or a wit- 
ness. I caught the typhus fever there, 
I verily believe; but assuredly not by 
contagion. I breathed the atmosphere 
of the place where the fever was pre- 
valent, but I came in contact with no 
persons, nor associated with any, who 
were afflicted with the disease; and 
though, while I languished under it, 
none of my family neglected any of the 
attentions requisite in my condition, or 
took any precautions to avoid contact 
or communion with me, none of them. 
became affected.* I breathed the air, 
during my residence at Myrthertydfil, 
in which the malaria of this Weinioplaate 
was afloat (such is my interpretation of 
the process), and I was in a state, at the 
time, both of mind and body, suffi- 
ciently predisposing to liability to stich 
infection. Ifthe real plague had been 
there, I have no doubt that I should 
have caught it just as readily. Mind 
and frame were already in a state of 
morbid debility : I was prepared for dis- 
ease, and the state of the atmosphere I 
breathed*gave it its peculiar direction ° 
and character’; while the healthful 
clown who accompanied me, and whose 
associations were likely to be much 
more with the class infected, inhaled 
the same atmosphere uninjured. Had 
it been a case of very plague, the same 
difference would probably have occur- 
red—only that the terrors of ignorance 
might, perhaps, have levelled the con- 
stitutional difference of liability: for, in 
every species of disease, there must be 
a remote and predisposing, as well as a 
proximate cause, or the malady will not 
be contracted: an axiom which ought 
to be remembered by the disputants on 
both 
* “ No fever produced by contaminated, 
air can be communicated to others in a pure 
air.”” 
