iv INTRODUCTION AND DEDICATION. 



London, offering these lectures to him for his reprint of 

 American Medical Tracts. His plan, not embracing un- 

 published manuscripts, excluded them; but he kindly sug- 

 gested the propriety of their immediate publication by 

 myself, as he thought an essay on a subject of so much 

 novelty ought not, through my aversion to publicity, to 

 remain inedited. 



Since that time, a work of some merit has been printed 

 in England, and dedicated, by permission, to John Forbes, 

 M.D., by its author, Charles Cowdell, M.B., M.R.C.S., 

 London, 1848. It professes to be, "A Disquisition on 

 Pestilential Cholera, being an attempt to explain its phe- 

 nomena, nature, cause, prevention, and treatment, by re- 

 ference to an extrinsic fungous origin." A review of 

 works on cholera, inclusive of that of Dr. Cowdell, ap- 

 peared in the July number of the British and Foreign 

 Medico-Chirurgical Review, for 1848, in which the re- 

 viewer recommends to Dr. Cowdell to extend his hypo- 

 thesis, which he thinks ingenious and interesting, "to 

 all epidemics. He would, perhaps, find yellow fever and 

 plague still more to his purpose than cholera." 



Dr. Cowdell's book, and the review of it, reached me 

 nearly at the same time, and left me no further excuse for 

 withholding these lectures from the public, unless I pre- 

 ferred to lose what little of reputation might be obtained 

 by sending them to the press. 



It will be seen that I have not attempted to conceal the 

 sentiments of former writers on this subject, although my 

 ignorance of German prevents me from knowing exactly, 

 how far the authors of that country, Henle, Muller, and 

 others, have carried their ideas. Nothing in Dr. Cow- 

 dell's book occurs to show that he was aware of any pre- 

 existent fungous theory of fevers, nor of the wide dissemi- 



