PREFACE. 



In preparing the following pages, I have had the opportunity 

 to inform myself pretty accurately regarding the ramifications of 

 the subject upon -which I have written herein; and I have 

 endeavored to avoid setting down "aught in malice" in this 

 "History of the Hen Fevee" in the United States. 



I have followed this extraordinary mama from its incipient 

 stages to iU final death, or its cure, as the reader may elect to 

 term its conclusion. The first symptoms of the fever were 

 exhibited in my own house at Boxbury, Mass., early in the sum- 

 mer of 1849. From that time down to the opening of 1855 (or 

 rather to the winter of 1854), I have been rather intimately con- 

 nected with the movement, if common report speaks correctly ; 

 and I believe I have seen as much of the tricks of this trade as 

 one usually meets with in the course of a single natural life. 



Now that the most serious effects of this (for six years) alarm- 

 ing epidemic have passed away from among us, and when " the 

 people" who have been called upon to pay the cost of its support, 

 and for the burial of its victims, can look back upon the scenes 

 1* 



