630 
which this fever evinced in the Bann, both at Ascen-" 
sion and Bahia. If this evidence be questioned, it is 
in vain to look for further testimony in human 
affairs.” 
Now, for our part, though we lean much 
more to the side of the Westminster than 
the Chirurgical Review ; and are perfectly 
satisfied that, to a considerable extent, the 
arguments advanced by the non-conta- 
gionists, and the positions laid down by Dr. 
Jarrold in our succeeding pages, are satisfac- 
tory, almost to the verge of demonstration ; 
yet we think the question, as yet, by no 
means ripe for final adjudication—at least, . 
for such adjudication as would be pro- 
nounced by a legislative interference, to 
the extent of the immediate abolition of 
the sanitary system of quarantine. We 
perfectly agree with the Westminster Re- 
viewer in the point of view in which the 
facts alleged of old “to prove that the 
plague is contagious,’ ought to be re- 
garded. 
«« The earliest fact of this kind on record is that 
stated by Fracastorius in 1547, who affirms, that 
“* out of one leather coat, there died five-and-twenty 
Germans, who put it on one after another.” This 
“* fact” is said to have happened thirty years before, 
during a plague at Vienna; the narrator does not 
pretend to have witnessed it ; he gives no testimony 
on the authority of others ; the scene is laid in Italy; 
the victims are Germans. Alexander Benedictus 
(Lib. de Peste, cap. 3] informs us, that there was a 
feather bed which was thrown aside into'a remote 
corner of the house, because it was ‘* suspected to 
hold the plague in it, and that it raised the plague, 
by being shook up, seven years after, of which 5,900 
people died in twelve weeks in Wratislaw.” And in 
‘another place, we are told by the same author, that 
“* the pestilent contagion was shut up in a rag for 
fourteen years!” Forestus affirms, that a young 
man was seized with the plague, only ‘* by thrusting 
his hand into an old trunk wherein there was a cob- 
web, which in that instant made a plague” rise. 
The plague of London in 1665 is attributed to a 
Frenchman, who is said to have died of the disease 
in Drury-lane, and to have had in his possession 
some Turkish silk, which had been imported the 
preceding year from Holland, and in which the con- 
tagion resided, although there is no proof even of 
the existence of this Frenchman, much less that he 
died of the plague with silk in his possession, and 
that this silk came not from Lyons, but from Con- 
stantinople. During the epidemic in 1698, says Noah 
Webster, ‘‘a flock of quails flew over the chimney 
of a house, in which several diseased persons were, 
and five of them fell dead upon the spot!” Such 
are the facts on which the elder contagionists relied : 
the three first are the principal circumstances ad- 
duced by Sennertus, to prove that the plague isa 
contagious disease, and they appear to have been 
the main, if not the only foundations, on which 
sanitary laws were first established.” 
Nor are we less disposed. to the smile of 
incredulity, when, amore modern conta~ 
gionists, 
** Dr. Wittman Pa ott us that the brother of the 
French general Julien, who died of the plague in 
Egypt, had ‘* received the infection by taking a 
pinch of snuff from a box, out of which a person who 
had the plague on him at the time had also taken 
snuff;” or when it is ‘* affirmed that a man drop- 
ped down dead of the plague by.standing on a Tur- 
Review of Literature. 
key carpet, and that a lady by only smelling at 6 
Turkey handkerchief died of the plague on the 
spot;” or that ‘‘in breaking open a letter, or on 
opening a bale of cotton, containing the germ of the 
plague, men have been struck down and killed by 
the pestilential vapours ;” or when ‘* Dr. Augustus 
Bozzi Granville relates to the Committee of the 
House of Commons, that in Corfu in 1815 a priest 
who went into the church and touched the cloth of 
the great altar so as toshake it, in order to purify it, 
was seized with the plague; that he instantly fell 
down on the steps of the altar, and that in three 
hours, even before he could be carried to the Lazza- 
retto, he expired, with buboes under the arms, and 
livid spots over the body.” 
And, if Dr. W. Pym chooses to talk of 
ff knowing an instance of what he has no 
acquaintance with by personal observation,” 
we can only say that he seems to have con- 
sulted, for the meaning of English words, 
English Dictionaries only, with which we 
have no acquaintance. Nor have we much 
more respect for the logic of Dr. Tully, 
when he can find no better way of shewing 
that experience has proved the fallacy of 
the doctrine of what he calls fanciful theo- 
rists, on the non-contagion of the plague, 
than the following : 
«« Thus, of the plague of Marseilles in 1720, the 
physicians of Paris believed that it was not conta- 
gious ; the fatal consequences are too well known: 
60,000 persons fell victims to the disease in the short 
space of seven months. The faculty of Sicily declared 
the distemper which ravaged the city of Messina in 
1743 not to be of a contagious nature, and in the 
short space of three months 43,000 individuals were 
sacrificed. The theoretical doctrine of non-conta- 
gion is in these instances refuted by the plain demon- 
stration of facts.” 
Certainly nothing can be more ridiculous 
than to suppose that 60,000 people at Mar- 
seilles, and 43,000 in Sicily, could not die 
just as probably by the malaria of an 
infected atmosphere, as by contagion; or 
as if as great, or still greater devastation 
had never been spread in regions, and. at 
times in which the orthodox faith, in the 
contagious nature of the disease, had never 
been called in question. Dr. Tully has, 
indeed, thought it necessary, for his own 
argument, to admit that— 
“© This is a cause equally general in its operation 
with contagion : it might even be said to bemore uni- 
versal in its influence; but,” continues he, ‘‘ thou- 
sands of human beings have breathed the same air 
with those victims of pestilential distemper, who 
were hourly dying around them, and have yet re- 
mained unaffected; therefore, the plague is not dis- 
seminated by any atmospheric cause.” _ 
No one can doubt that, whether infec- 
tion be spread by contagion or by a diseased 
state of the atmosphere, all persons are not 
equally liable to the influence of such infec- 
tion; there must be a predisposition to liability 
in the constitution, or the infection wilt 
not be imbibed. Even the small-pox, the 
contagious nature of which is not ques- . 
tioned, infects not all that approach it. 
All do not fall into canine madness that are 
bit by a mad dog. 
some practitioners, that not one in three 
of 
a a 
Tt has been averaged by - | 
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