ADDITIONAL NOTES ON CONTAGION. 255 



example's to convince me early of the truth of that opinion. Further I cannot say any 

 thing from my own experience. The French physicians differed in their opinions whe- 

 ther the plague was indigenous or accidentally imported in Egypt, but nomoftkem denied 

 its contagiousness. Owing, perhaps, to the same opinion that I had, and to the natural 

 propensity to imitate what others did with success, in avoiding, as much as they could, 

 communication and contact, I escaped the danger, and I am happily placed in the situation 

 to express to you the sentiments of esteem with which I remain, 



Sir, your most obedient, 



humble servant, 

 Dr. Hosack. ALIKE R. DELILE. 



Without further enlarging on this head, we are, I believe, prepared to conclude, with 

 the learned Dr. Parr, ** That those who have suggested and disseminated doubts of the 

 contagiousness of plague, are answerable for the lives of thousands, and, in some instances, 

 have paid the forfeit with their own." London Medical Dictionary. 



NOTE D. (See page 225.) 



I have remarked in the text as an evidence, among others, that the yellow fever which 

 prevailed in New York in the year 1798, was not produced by putrid beef, that those per- 

 sons who were employed in removing such putrid provisions from the city escaped the 

 yellow fever. The same respectable gentleman, Mr. Edmund Prior, who furnished me 

 with that fact, has also informed me, that of forty persons who were engaged in that par- 

 ticular service, under his immediate inspection, thirty-eight were attacked with a com- 

 plaint of a very different character, the dysentery ; which disease it is well known to all 

 practical writers, frequently arises from decomposed animal and vegetable matter, as its 

 exciting cause. 



The remaining two persons who had been thus employed by Mr. Prior, escaped the 

 dysentery, with which their comrades were afflicted ; but upon leaving that service, and 

 being afterwards exposed to the contagion of yellow fever, while working on board of 

 ships, they fell victims to that disease ; a circumstance which clearly shows that dysente- 

 ry and yellow fever derive their origin from different sources: for additional particu- 

 lars on this 'lead, see Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Yellow Fever, &c. by William 

 Carrie, Philadelphia, 1800. 



That the yellow fever of 1798, did not proceed from the putrid beef, to which many 



