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warmest and longest ever known within the memory of 

 man. I wonder whether Mr. Gamgee ever heard that 

 history, from Homer downwards, is full of instances of epi- 

 demics following unusual heat. Last summer there was a 

 plague of flies. I wonder whether Mr. Gamgee ever heard 

 or read how history is full of instances of epidemics fol- 

 lowing plagues of insects. This winter has been the 

 wettest ever known. I wonder whether Mr. Gamgee ever 

 read how in London, in 1799, a malignant contagious 

 fever followed an extraordinarily wet season. Farmers 

 crowd cattle together in winter. I wonder whether 

 Mr. Gamgee ever heard or read how, in I757j Sir John 

 Pringle records that some soldiers, upon being seized with 

 the common fever of the season, were confined in the holds 

 of crowded transports, and that the malady immediately 

 assumed the form of the most malignant jail fever. In 

 winter farmers half-starve vast numbers of their cattle. I 

 wonder whether Mr. Gamgee ever heard of the Greek pro- 

 verb, " the plague after famine." Those beasts farmers do 

 not starve, they overfeed for butchers. I wonder whether 

 Mr. Gamgee ever heard or read how Sir B. Brodie says, 

 that about the most unhealthy class in the community are 

 gentlemen's butlers who live on the fat of the land in 

 regions flowing with ale and porter, and that for them to 

 catch even a trifling malady is a most serious thing. Then 

 about contagion. I wonder whether Mr. Gamgee ever 

 heard or read how Dr. Haygarth describes attempts which 

 were made without success in France at the end of the last 

 century to infect children with small-pox in the open air; 

 also how although cholera has been communicated by clothes 

 shut up in a box; and though in the year 15 77* in the 

 close air of a court of justice, two judges and sundry 

 lawyers caught jail fever from a prisoner, and died, innu- 

 merable medical writers have recorded their conviction of 



