220 THE CONTAGIOUS TYPHUS 



II. 



Now that we have examined the measures 

 which prudence directs us to take to defend 

 ourselves against the causes which produce and 

 propagate typhus, let us think of the means of 

 preventing it, when the contagion threatens to 

 diffuse itself over a whole kingdom, as at 

 present it is doing in England. 



When, on the 19th of last June, it was 

 believed that the typhus or Cattle Plague, 

 as they continue to call it, had effected its 

 invasion in England, the Government, in- 

 formed by professional men of the serious 

 danger to which the interests of the country 

 would be exposed, if the disease should 

 spread, might have considered this distemper 

 not as a question of private interest, but as one 

 of public and national concern. It might at 

 the outset have given to this epizootia all the 

 significancy of a public calamity, have looked 

 upon it as the invasion of an enemy threaten- 

 ing to destroy its territory, and have employed 

 every possible means to stifle it at its birth. 



We well know that the English Govern- 

 ment, derived as it is rather from political 



