236 THE CONTAGIOUS TYPHUS 



the means of treatment as England ; whilst we 

 have the consolation of attributing this im- 

 potence on the part of this country to the fact 

 that the outbreak of the epizootia has oc- 

 curred during the Parliamentary recess. 



It is, therefore, to institutions rather than to 

 individuals that we must ascribe the impossi- 

 bility of conquering the difficulties which have 

 been met, and which at any other time might not 

 have obstructed the course of things. Far be 

 it from us therefore to accuse of indifference a 

 great people renowned for their zealous promo- 

 tion of public interests, for their charity and 

 inexhaustible philanthropy, whose innumerable 

 asylums have been opened to every misfortune, 

 who support so many hospitals and public 

 charities by their voluntary contributions, and 

 who, in so many calamities, have seen some de- 

 voted heroine issue from her retirement to as- 

 suage them. For if the Crimean war produced 

 its lady beneficent in the person of Florence 

 Nightingale, all of us must allow that if others 

 had followed the example of Miss Burdett 

 Coutts, who, in a manner, has stood alone against 

 the storm, by the facilities she has afforded for 

 treating and experimentalizing on the cattle 



