[Pt_1
[Pg 47] not since 1804! At Malaga, I believe, it did not prevail since 1814! So we have here a pretty good specimen of the accuracy of some of those who undertake to come forward as guides to the public on an occasion of great urgency and peril. By some of Sir Gilbert's abettors, we are assured that his "facts are perfectly reconcileable with the hypothesis of the cholera being of an infectious nature." A fig for all hypothesis just now! Let us have something like the old English trial by jury. May I be allowed to introduce a fresh evidence to the public notice, in addition to the thousand-and-one whose testimony is already recorded. He is worthy of belief for two good reasons in particular; the one because he still (unable to explain what can never be explained, perhaps), calls himself a contagionist, and, in the next place, the statements being from a high official personage, he could not offer them unless true to his Government, as hundreds might have it in their power to contradict them if not accurate. My witness is not a Doctor, but a Duke—the Duke de Mortemar, lately Ambassador from the French Court to St. Petersburg, who has just published a pamphlet on cholera, a few short extracts from which, but those most important ones, I shall here give. Read them!—people of all classes, read them over and over again! "An important truth seems to be proved by what we shall here relate, which is, that woods seem to diminish the influence of cholera, and that cantons in the middle of thick woods, and placed in the centre of infected countries, have altogether escaped the devastating calamity!"—"The island of Kristofsky, placed in the centre of the populous islands of St. Petersburg, communicating with each other by two magnificent bridges, and with the city by thousands of boats, which carried every day, and particularly on Sundays, a great number of people to this charming spot. The island of Kristofsky, we say, was preserved completely from attacks of the cholera; there was not a single person ill of the disease in three villages upon it." He continues to state particulars, which, for want of time, cannot be here given, and adds—"To what is this salubrity of Kristofsky, inhabited by the same sort of people as St. Petersburg, to be attributed, fed in the same manner, and following a similar regime,—communicating with each other daily, if it be not to the influence of the superb forest which shelters it? The firs, which are magnificent as well as abundant, surround the houses."[15] He notices that the town is low and humid, and that "it is made filthy every Sunday by the great numbers who resort to it, and who gorge themselves with intoxicating drink." In a third letter I shall be able to furnish further extracts from this most interesting pamphlet.
[14] I am aware that very lately certain memoranda have been referred to from the surgeon, but this is merely an expiring effort, and of no avail against the official Report drawn up.
[15] As these most remarkable circumstances have not appeared in the statements of our Russian medical commission, we must either presume that the Duke is not correct, or that those facts have escaped the notice of the commission.
In a letter lately inserted in a newspaper, the greatest injustice is done to the Board of Health by the comments made on their recommendations for the treatment of cholera—it is not true that they have reccommended specifics, and I must add my feeble voice in full approbation of all they have suggested on this point. Let the public remark that they most judiciously
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[Pg 48] point at the application of dry heat, not baths, which always greatly distress the patient, and, indeed, have sometimes been observed (that is, where the coldness and debility are very great) to accelerate a fatal issue. Of all the arrangements to which a humane public can direct their attention, there is nothing so essential as warmth. I would, therefore, humbly beg to suggest, that funds for the purpose of purchasing coals for gratuitous issue to the poor should be at once established in all directions. Too much, I think, has been said about ventilation and washing, and too little about this.
November 10th.
LETTER VIII.
Already has the problem of the contagious or non-contagious nature of this disease been solved upon our own land; and as sophistry can no longer erect impediments to the due distribution of the resources of this pre-eminently humane nation, it is to be hoped that not an hour will be lost in shaping the arrangements accordingly. What now becomes of the doctrine of a poison, piercing and rapid as the sun's rays, emanating from the bodies of the sick—nay, from the bodies of those who are not sick, but who have been near them or near their houses? In the occurrences at Newcastle and Sunderland, how has the fifty times refuted doctrine of the disease spreading from a point in two ways, or in one way, tallied with the facts? We were desired to believe that in India, Persia, &c., "the contagion travelled," as the expression is, very slow, because this entity of men's brains was obliged to wend its way with the march of a regiment, or with the slow caravan: now, however, when fifty facilities for the most rapid conveyance have been afforded every hour since its first appearance, it will not put itself one bit out of its usual course. And then what dangers to the attendants on the sick to the members of the same family—to the washerwomen—to the clergymen—to the buriers of the dead—even to those who passed the door of the poor sufferer! Well, what of all this has occurred? Why it has occurred that this doctrine, supported by many who were honest, but had not duly examined alleged facts, and by others, I regret to say, whose interests guided their statements—that the absurdity of this doctrine has now been displayed in the broad light of day. Make allowance (even in this year of great notoriety for susceptibility to cholera in the people at large in this country) for insusceptibility on the part of numbers who came into contact at Sunderland and Newcastle, with the persons of cholera patients, with their beds, their furniture, their clothes, &c., yet, if there had ever been the slightest foundation for the assertions of the contagionists, what numbers ought to have been contaminated, in all directions over the face of the country, even within the first few days, considering the wonderful degree of intercourse kept up between all parts. But we find that, as in Austria and Prussia, "la maladie de la terre" is not disposed here to accommodate itself to vain
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[Pg 49] speculations. Now the matter may be reduced to the simple rules of arithmetic, viz.:—if, as "contagionists par metier" say, the poison from the body of one individual be, in the twinkling of an eye, and in more ways than one, transmitted to the bodies of a certain number who have been near him, &c., how many thousands, or tens of thousands, in every direction, should, in a multiplied series of communications and transmissions, be now affected?