the Validity of the Doctrine of Conlagton in the Plague. 27 



cause no adequate proof has ever, in any single instance, been 

 adduced of the existence of contagion in pestilence. From its 

 first promulgation to the present day, the doctrine has been no- 

 thing more than a series of gratuitous assumptions. 3. Because 

 had pestilential diseases been contagious, consequences must have 

 followed, which have not taken place. Being capable of affecting 

 the same persons repeatedly, they would never cease, where no 

 precautions are employed (and in such case no precautions could 

 avail,) until communities were extinguished : Turkey would long 

 ago have been a desert. 4. Because phaenomena now take place, 

 which, if pestilence were contagious, could not happen. Instead 

 of the laws of epidemic, they would observe only those of conta- 

 gious diseases. 5. Because a superabundance of irrefragable 

 proof has been adduced, showing that pestilence never arises 

 from contagion; and because the assumption resorted to, in or- 

 der to elude this proof, that ' to the effect of contagion', a parti- 

 cular state of the atmosphere is necessary to produce the disease,' 

 is only, in other words, an acknowledgement that a particular 

 state of the atmosphere is its real cause. G. Because, for cen- 

 turies before any intercourse, direct or indirect, was established 

 between this country and the Levant, or rather as far back as 

 history extends, pestilence wa^vat least as frequent in England, as 

 in the 16th and 17th centuries, when our commercial intercourse 

 with Turkey was considerable. 1 . Because, when the free states 

 of Italy traded both with the Levant, and with the north of Eu- 

 rope ; when they were the carriers, not only of the merchandise, 

 but of the troops of the principal powers of Christendom en- 

 gaged in the crusades; and when tb.ey possessed Smyrna, Cy- 

 prus, Candia, Scio, Cephalonia. Caffa, and even Pera, a suburb 

 of Constantinople, no apprehension was then entertained, under 

 a constant intercourse, of pestilence being propagated by infec- 

 tion, nor any precautions adopted by any nation for the preven- 

 tion of such a calamity. S. Because, during the century and a 

 half which has elapsed since 16G5, and in which there has been 

 no plague in England, our commerce and intercourse with the 

 Levant have been more extensive, and more rapid than at any 

 former period. 0. Because there is no reason to believe, that in 

 modern times, ])estilcnces have undergone any revolution, in re- 

 spect cither to their nature or to other causes, further than may 

 depend upon the advancement or retrogradation of countries re- 

 spectively, in cultivation, civilization, and the arts of life; or upon 

 an alteration in the seasons. 10. Because, as contagion, where it 

 • does exist, is sufliciently palpable, (it did not require the evidence 

 of inoculation to show that small-pox depends always upon 

 that source, and never upon any other,) if it were the cause of 

 pestilence, its existence could not, for thousands of years, have 



