Asiatic cholera; its origin and spread in Asia, Africa, and Europe, introduced into America through Canada;

Front matter

BasMt

UifliiliiU

■ ■ ill

Preface

It was through medical journals, commencing in 1820, that my attention was first drawn to the cholera of India, said to prevail in an epidemic form, and to its subsequent spread through the rest of Asia, the east of Africa and into Europe, even into the western confines of the latter continent. In the absence of personal observation, I became as thoroughly conversant with the malady as reading could afford information. But I could not help being struck with the great discrepancy in opinions and doctrines promulgated. On one point only all were in perfect accord; that point was one of patent fact — a description of the appearance of a patient and the phenomena manifested in every case. In all other respects they all disagreed, as doctors — doctors in medicine and doctors in theology — only can differ and argue.

IV PREFACE.

Thus prepared by reading, and rendered skeptical by conflicting doctrines and opinions, I entered upon the duHes of my office. Daily reports were sent in to the Board of Magistrates, and to my office as executive officer of the Medical Board, from practitioners, and other sources of information. It will be admitted that under these circumstances I was favorably placed to become well acquainted with the pest from its first appearance in America, in 1832, and the second invasion in 1834; nor have I remained unmindful of subsequent irruptions.

Of the contents of this book I have often spoken, for years past, with medical men, and as often have been urged to publish my views. I do so now, principally to fix a point in history:

The introduction of a new malady into a neiv country, and to record the experience I acquired in the beginning, and which has been confirmed by every case since then. Many of my statements come into direct collision with those of previous and even of present writers. The only apology I can offer for the difference is, mine are the result of personal observations carefully made on the patient, unbiassed by abstract theories, and an erroneous physiology,

PREFACE. V

which possesses nothing in common with Asiatic cholera.

R. NELSON.

P. S. Since writing this book, some of my statements have met with corroboration this present season, namely: 1st. Cholera broke out on board a French vessel a few days out of port. It soon had selected its victims, and then ceased; the remainder of the passage, which was of some weeks' duration, was completed in perfect health, when the vessel arrived at Guadaloupe, all well. 2d. An apparently healthy ship and passengers enter a new (land) atmosphere, and within a day or two the pest breaks out among the passengers who had escaped the pestilence on board, and communicate it to a healthy people, among whom it makes dreadful ravages. (See Sections 66, 67, 74, 87, 88.) 3d. Two steamers, from England, experience an outbreak on board a few days after leaving port. (Sec. 78.) But the vessels arrive with cholera still on board; the passage being of only two weeks' duration, the pest had not the usual period of time to select all the susceptible, and then cease. One put into Halifax, is placed in seclusion, and now,

VI PREFACE.

in a new (land) atmosphere, renews its activity, as has ever been the case. Some passengers escape from the quarantine inclosure, travel rapidly through a perfectly healthy country, take ill and die in the new atmosphere. These three vessels afford several other points corroborative of my statements, but which I do not notice, that I may not enlarge this book uselessly.

B. N.

Index

Adipose tissue diminished, 208; Omentum, 200.

Aeration of blood arrested, 118.

Animals attacked — A horse, 176; Poultry, Fishes, 177.

Ascites, hydroth'>rax, etc., drained away, 204.

Atmosphere — Choleraic, 41; Cholera carried by, 45; Change of, no protection, 88; While in infected, less risk, removal to a healthy one injurious, 155.

Attacks — Sudden, 57; At Suedie, 58; While riding, 106; At breakfast, 57; None other than the exposed, 208.

Attack, a second one, 172.

Bile — Secretion of, arrested, 139.

Blood, 185; Quality of, 194; Salts in, 196; Globules, proportion of, explained, 194; In the cyanosed state, 186; Difference between healthy and choleraic, 194.

Cesarean operations, 126.

Calorification arrested, 121; Temperature reduced to 70°, 122; Cold breath, 124; Interior of body cold, 126; Stools cold, 123; A warm enema returned cold, 125; Saline injections cooled in passing through the body 129; Temperature measured by thermometer, 128.

Catalysis, 138.

Vlll INDEX.

Cause, remote, importance of studying, 29; Attributed to the atmosphere, 41; Absurd opinions, 42; Humid miasms, 44 to 47; Low grounds and high make no difference, 49; Dry places, 51, 52, 54; High land — Mysore, Ghauts, Ararat, Lebanon, Caucasus, Himmalayas, etc., 52.

Cholera— Common, 92; Cases, 95, 96, 97, 98.

Cholera — Asiatic. 109.

Cholera — Carried by caravans, 73.

Cholera — Carried by ships to Muscat, 61 ; By frigate Topaz to Mauritius, 66; By Pic-Var to St. Denis, 67; By frigate Leander to Trinchimallee, 74; By a brig to Astrachan, 75; By frigate Abercrombie, 76; To Collapore, 77; By French frigates Cybele and Cleopatre, 78; By mercantile fleet into Canada, 147; The Kobert from Cork, 148; Constantia from Limerick, Elizabeth, Carrick, brig Brutus, ship Brutus, 148; By canal boats, 58; By pest steamer Voyageur, 155; By troops, 56.

Cholerine and diarrhoea, 113.

Choleraic poison converts a portion of the system into the liquid form, 219.

Choleraic Poison leaves no pathological trace, 103.

Cholera, cases of, all alike, 109, 110, 111, 114.

Cholera, cases of, rapid, 115.

Cholera, cases of, mild, 111, 112.

Cold country or situation made no difference, Moscow, North of Europe, Edinburgh, 21, et seq.

Circulation arrested, 119; Capillaries cease to act, 189; Arteries and veins equally rilled, 190.

INDEX. IX

Cleanliness no preventive— Palace of a prince, 79; Among the wealthy, 161, 162; Mortality among the wealthy statistically greater than among the lower orders, 162.

Compound radical theory, 216, 217, 218.

Congestion in cranium, 191; A convenient word, 192.

Conquest arrested, 89.

Contagionists, Non-, 39.

Contagion — see Itinerary; carried to Pan well by a prisoner, 59; By Caravans, 73; See ships, boats, troops, etc., 56, 60; Carried by clothing, 62, 63; Great fair at Nijne-Novgorod, 65; By a bed, 158; By a raft, 158; By a drover, 158; By a canal boat, 158; Miss Hughes, 173; By immediate intercourse, 159; From person to person, 55; Dr. Labrousse at Bourbon, 67.

Cramps, 132.

Cures supposed to have been made, 259.

Cyanosis due to non-aeration, 118; Stasis of blood in rete malpighi, 140; Soon disappears in short cases, 141; Persists purple in "typhoid state," 110.

Curious catalogue of reputed remedies, 220.

Digestion arrested, 120.

Disease, definition of, 101 ; Asiatic cholera not a disease, but simply a poison, 92.

Drunkards escape, 90, 162.

Duration of cholera in one place, 86, 87, 88.

Enclosed places escape, Gurruckpore jail, 66; Baron Me' lius, 67; In Montreal, 180.

Erroneous physiology, 184, 185, 222.

Exclusion by the Moravians, and escape, 68; Sequestration of houses in Moscow, 69; M. de Lesseps in Egypt,

INDEX.

70; Passes at Sankerredroog, 71; Teheran, 73; Bun-

gheet Sing, 82.

Exudation through the skin, not perspiration, 137; a colli-

quate oozes out, 208, 209.

Galvanism useless, 238.

Garrison at Montreal, 174, Infection, range of, 85; How soon manifest, 78. Inflammation cannot be excited, 197; Of semilunar gan^

glion, 198.

Itinerary in Asia, Africa and Europe, 1 to 28; In Canada,

144 to 183.

Incubation before out-break, 78, 86; Seldom exceeds four

days, 108; On shipboard, 148, 155, 212. Heart, 187; Liver, 201; Spleen, 202; Kidneys, 203. Mental faculties remain perfect, 142; Perverted sensation

of heat, 117, 131.

Not exempt-medical practitioners and nurses, etc., 39; Pa-

tient with variola, fever, etc., 264. Quarantine in Canada, 145 to 150.

Serous membranes all dry, 204.

Secretions arrested, why, 133; Varicose ulcers, sinuses, gonorrhoea, cease to secrete, 204.; Of bile, 139; Of urine suppressed, why, 133.

Religion as a prophylactic by the king of Siam, 83; propagated by the ceremonies of, 80; Juggernaut, 81, Mecca, 84, Canada, 137.

Strangury explained, 135; Not in females, 136. Stomach and intestines contracted, 199, Thirst, cause of, 143.

INDEX. XI

Treatment, 220; Examined in detail, 223; bleeding, 223; Calomel, 225; Emetics, 228; Purgatives, 230; Enemas, 233; Metastasis, 226; Sinapisms, epispastics, cautery, red-hot iron, scalding water, nitric acid, 227; Sedatives, 232; Opium abused, 234; Stimulants, 234; Bath, warm, 235; Astringents, 236; Drinks, 237; Quinine, per or am et anum, 239; Acupuncture of the heart, 238; Charcoal, 240; Oxygen gas, nitrous oxide, 241; Chloroform, 242; Saline venous injections, 243: Effect of injections, 244, 245, 246, 247; Farrago of treatment completed, 248.

Treatment, sound: Opium, merits of, 249, 250; Drinks, made of tartaric acid, 352; Hot applications, 254; Cold bath, 255; Medical treatment uncertain and confused, 256; Dialogue between Honesty and Pretence, 257; Expectant treatment, 258 ; Quietude necessary to arrest vomiting, 260, 261; Opiate, proper time to give, 262; Proper quantity, 263; Diarrhoea- cholerine treated, 264, 265.

Vox cholerica, 130.

ASIATIC CHOLERA.

Chapter I. Origin And Itinerary

The 19th century is remarkable for the great events that have taken place since its commencement, and a short time previously. In it the knowledge of steam, its powers, the means of controlling it, its uses as a substitute for bodily and manual labor, and its I complete obedience to the hand of man, have been perfected.

Chemistry, already in its infancy, has become an exact science.

Electricity and magnetism have advanced from being mere toys to a grade of the highest utility. Geology has disinterred the long buried almanac of the globe, brought clearly into light the reign of extinct creations, overwhelmed and hidden since millions of years have passed away. These are only a 2

14 ASIATIC CHOLEftA.

few of the remarkable occurrences; but the one which distinguishes this century more than all others of which history makes mention, in relation to man, is the stupendous plague called Cholera. Stupendous from its wide spread malignancy over every continent; stupendous from the millions of victims it has swallowed; stupendous from the rapidity of its spread; stupendous from the few brief moments of life it allows to those it attacks: apparently capricious in its selections, it has desolated some places, spared others; terrified nations, arrested the march of armies, turned conquest into defeat, laughed at science, and baffled the efforts of man to arrest its empire.

1. Sporadic cases of cholera have been known in all historic ages, from that in which the great Hippocrates flourished until now, and is mentioned in all treatises of medicine. In India it has been long known. Bontius, Lind, Dellon, &c, almost all writers on the diseases of that country, make special mention of it. It is said to have prevailed in an epidemic form in the Bengalese territory in 1762, when it carried off 30,000 natives and 800 Europeans in one season, and then ceased.

2. A more recent account says that the Government of India became cognizant of an increase of the malady among the natives ten years, at least, before it assumed the character of terrible devastation that

ORIGftf AtfD iTMEBARr. 15

distinguished it in 1817; while, in all these ten years, not one case occurred among the European population, and during that period not one case was admitted into the General Hospital of Calcutta. It still maintained the simple and sporadic character noticed for many years; that is, single cases, here and there, now and then, happened apparently spontaneously and without assignable cause, not spreading from one to another individual, and still less existing as an epidemic.

3. The Government of Bengal was officially informed on the 28th of August, 1817, that a sudden, violent and spreading irruption of cholera had occurred in the populous town of Jessore, the capital of the Sunderbunds, situated in the delta of the Ganges, sixty miles from Calcutta; and that 10,000 of the inhabtitants had died in a few weeks. The report stated: " The inhabitants, astonished and terrified at the unaccountable and destructive pestilence, fled in crowds to the country as the only means of escaping impending death. So unforeseen and appalling was the attack, the public functionaries, in extreme consternation, closed the civil courts of the district, and business of every description was abandoned for a time. In the course of a few weeks 10,000 of the inhabitants perished in this single district.7'

It reached Calcutta on the 1st of September, whence it spread like radii from a centre to all points of the compass.

4. Although its origin is generally located at Jessore, it is asserted that it ravaged the banks of the Burrampooter early in June, reached Silket, in the east, and spread to the confines of Balasore and the provinces of Behar, in the east. To the northwest of Jessore it attacked Patna and Dinapore, July 11th. Following the course of the Ganges and its tributaries, it reached and attacked the camp of the Marquis of Hastings, in Bundelcund, on the banks of the Sinde, a tributary of the Jumna, on the 6th November. The invasion was so sudden and violent that mounted men were stricken from their steeds, fell and died on the road. The roads were encumbered with ill, dying and dead of the army, and its followers, more numerous about an Indian army than the army itself. But this irruption, though astounding, was soon over; for, having commenced on the 6th November, no new cases occurred in the camp after the 8th December. However, the pestilence still followed in the track of the army, or rather the army sowed its seeds all along the roads, rivers, and ways of travel, infecting village and town in succession throughout Bundelcund, and spread to the provinces of Behar, Malwah, Candish, overshadowing nearly all the Deccan. It killed 10,000 in the town of Banda, and all the neighboring towns were similarly oppressed. One of these towns, Kotah, lies on the east side of the Chumbul, and is built upon a dry rock; but the aridity of the location afforded no sanitary protection, since 100 persons perished daily; the surviving inhabitants, struck at last with dismay, fled the city.

5. Two offshoots of the pestilence appear to have set out from the town of Saugur, the westerly one going to Kotah, and the southern one, going due south, attacked the forces stationed on the Nerbundah, advanced through the states of Nagpore and Poonah, passed through Seringapatan to the extreme point of India. The westerly one from Kotah followed the coast of Malabar. An eastern branch followed the coagt of Coromandel,

6. Each of these offsets invaded town after town, village after village in succession, regardless of topography, high or low land, mountain, plain or swamp; nor was the high Ghaut-range capable of presenting a barrier to its destructive march.

7. Northwardly it reached Fyzabad and Lucknow in April and May, 1818. At Gurruckpore it carried off 30,000 of the inhabitants, while, during this appalling devastation, not one of the prisoners confined in the jails took the pest. The high mountains that separate Hindostan from Nepaul were invaded, as well as the high table land of Patna and Rhatgoun, 4,000 feet above the sea; Katamandoo, in Nepaul, was attacked in 1818, and also the south flank of those almost impassable heights; and in 1819 it broke out in Siam, Cochin China, beyond that range.

8. In October, 1818, Madras suffered, and thence cholera reached Candy, the capital of Ceylon, at a great height above the sea, in December. Commencing at the coast, it spread to the interior of the island.

9. We have now traced the course of the pestilence from its cradle in the Sunderbunds, eastwardly to the confines of Cochin China; northwardly to the Himmalayas; westwardly to Bombay; and southwardly to Cape Comorin, and into the island of Ceylon. Let us now follow its course beyond India over the sea into Sumatra, Borneo, the Moluccas, and the Philippines, into China.

!()• Malacca, the extreme southern point of the Birman Empire, was attacked August, 1818; the pestilence was carried over to the island of Penang in the Straits; and in 1819 it spread through Sumatra. The town of Batavia alone lost 17,000, and the whole island 102,000, according to the Dutch statistics. Java suffered in April, 1821. The destruction in these places, like in Borneo, was appalling.

11. Manilla was attacked early in 1820, where the death of 15,000 victims alarmed the people to fury, who rose up against the foreigners and made a frightful massacre of them.

12. Traveling northwardly the cholera reached Canton in 1820. Bankok, in Siam, lost 40,000 in 1819. Nankin and Pekin suffered in 1823.

13. Southwesterly traveling across the sea it invaded the African islands, Mauritius and Island of Bourbon. The Topaz frigate, from Calcutta, anchored in Port St. Louis, Isle of France (Mauritius), at the end of November, 1819. Several of the crew had died of cholera on the passage. The captain refused to submit to quarantine; his people landed, infected the town, carrying off 20,000. (But the governor, Farquhar, perhaps to screen the captain of his haughty disobedience of the quarantine laws, reported the number at 7,000 or 8,000.) By strict measures adopted, the remainder of the island was spared.

14. Baron Melius, the French governor of the adjacent island, Bourbon, at once interdicted all communication with his colony. Still, in spite of severe but wise measures of the governor, the pestilence was brought there by the cupidity of a trading vessel, Pic-Var, which left Mauritius July 7, 1820. On the 14th cholera broke out at St. Denis. The inhabitants fled at once; the authorities surrounded the place with sentinels, kept up a most vigilant seclusion. Success was the result and the reward ; the pest spread no further into the county; it was confined to the town, in which 259 were attacked, of whom 178 died.

15. August 6th, 1818, it reached Panwell, separated from Bombay by a strait crossed daily by boats. On the 9th a passenger from Panwell introduced the pestilence into Bombay and Salsette, whence it spread along the whole coast of Malabar.

16. By the extensive commerce of Bombay it was carried across the gulf to Muscat, in July, 1821. It soon broke out in the islands of Ormus and Kishme, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf; and by August it extended up the coast to Bender- Abassi, where the destruction was so great that the bazaars were closed, houses abandoned, and the dead lay in heaps unburied in the streets. September 6th it broke out at Shiraz, a hundred miles up the coast; here one of the first families attacked was that of the Prince Royal of Persia. One of his wives, his mother, and many Georgian beauties in his seraglio, besides some of his children, were carried off. The mortality was 6,000 out of a population of 35,000. He fled, with his harem and suite, from the fury of the pestilence.

17. Continuing its northwardly route it invaded the towns of Yerd and Ispahan, where 25,000 fell its victims. Cachan, Koms and Teheran suffered, on its way to Tauris, in 1822. Boats carried it to Bassora and Bagdad, where it swept away one-third of the population. In July it infected Mosul, north of Bagdad, marched westward into Syria, and broke out at Aleppo, in November, 1822, spreading to Antioch, etc., along the coast of the Mediterranean to Tripoli.

18. Ascending the Caspian Sea it reached Astrachan, near the mouth of the Volga, in September, 1823, where the attacks and deaths were rapid. The Russian Government sent at once six medical officers to examine into the disorder; it also took wise, energetic and absolute measures to prevent it from ascending the river. These measures were effective for a while; but commerce broke down the barriers. An infected brig from Bakou, on the west coast of the Caspian, entered the Volga July 20, 1830, gave the disorder to Astrachan a second time, where 4,043 died. It spread to Saratof, August 12; Samara was infected September 3d, Kazan the 9 th, and by the 12th a few cases appeared in Moscow.

19. We will not follow its other eastern route through Russia to Nijne-Novogorod, where it broke out August 27th, and thence spread through the centre of Russia. There is some uncertainty whence this

2* irruption came. Some assert that it was due to the great annual fair of 100,000 merchants assembled to purchase the costly shawls and furs that came from Orenburgh — goods that had been infected and lay there since the previous year; others say that it might have been brought by travelers from Saratof, where it raged fifteen days before. September 3d it reached Kostroma, and many towns and villages on the route to Moscow.

20. By another route it crossed from the Volga, where this river approaches the Don, and descended this last named river to the Sea of Azof and the Black Sea coast in September, reaching Sebastopol in October, and broke out in Kischrif in December. Its ravages among the Cossacks of the Don were frightful; out of 54,000 cases 31,000 died — that is, out of seven patients six died !

21. About the end of September, 1830, cholera broke out at Moscow. On the 29th a military cordon was established around the city, whose office was to prevent egress and ingress. Strict quarantine was exacted of all — even the Emperor himself obeyed the law, and underwent eight days7 quarantine on his road to Twer. Mortality was great here throughout October and November, but diminished, as usual, after a while, by the 18th December. The population was 250,000, of which 8,130 died, equal to one in

25, a much smaller number tlian was expected; but this diminution was due to the cordon, the strict military discipline and quarantine, and to the closure of infected houses and places. A triple line of posts preserved St. Petersburg. Orders were sent to the people to lay in provisions for at least one year, to meet the wants of seclusion, should that become necessary.

22. The disorder still existed in January, although a severe winter had frozen all travel and communication. Still, all the sanitary regulations were kept up until the end of April, in consequence of the experience gained at Kievv, where, the disorder having ceased in November, all restrictions were removed; but unfortunately so, for only fifteen days after the relaxation of all restriction it broke out again, on the 1 5th December.

23. The Russian army moving on Poland was the rapid means of carrying the pest westvvardly. The troops of this army were drawn from the Ukraine and the provinces of Koursk, where cholera had raged the previous autumn. The violence of the plague did not diminish with its entry into a northern climate, for in April and May more than half of the attacked died, and this frightful proportion was exclusive of the military loss. Other troops coming from Bender and the shores of the Dnieper spread the pest among the people in February. With this army, cholera entered Poland at the southeast corner of the kingdom, on its march to the northwest, its destination being Warsaw. At the end of March it ravaged Lublin. By the 1st of April the hospitals of Siedlee became crowded with patients affected with cholera. On the 10th it broke out among the prisoners and the wounded brought into Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, on the opposite side ef the Vistula. The same day it was discovered in the Polish army after the battle of Iganie, proving fatal to the conquerors by the infected spoils collected from the slain of the vanquished.

24. The Russian Government appointed an extraordinary committee in April, whose office was to discuss and decide whether it was necessary to have a general purification of the goods left in Moscow during the winter after the cessation of the plague there. On this committee there were several merchants, besides disinterested scientific men. A majority was to decide. It is easy to see that cupidity would overpower honesty; accordingly a majority of votes decided that purification was unnecessary. Acting on this dangerous advice, the Government issued a circular to the several European powers to justify its conduct in not purifying these goods before their export. The result soon became apparent,

ORIGIN AND ITINEEARY. 25

for the boats which carried these goods down the Dwina and its tributaries to Riga carried also the contagion, which broke out in Riga 25th May.

25. With the irruption of the fell demon there also broke out alarm. On the 3d June sixty vessels fled in haste from Riga, and forty-two had already passed the Sund. Four of these vessels were destined to England, and one that was infected entered the port of Montrose in Scotland, where cholera spread lightly in June, but of which no official notice was announced.

26. An official report declared that 306 cases and 94 deaths had occurred in Sunderland, by October 26th.

However, Mr. Hall, surgeon of H. M. ship Temeraire, an hospital ship in the Medway, says that between the 7th and 9th August he had thirty cases, persons of all ages, even to infants at the breast. Drafts from Portsmouth, Plymouth, etc., who arrived to join the men-of-war here, men in robust health, took the disease within the first and second day of their arrival. The infected ships were sent into quarantine at Stangate, ten or twelve miles distant, by which means the pest was prevented from spreading there and then.

To return to Sunderland, it is affirmed that cholera was brought into that town through clothing collected from the dead in the Baltic.

27. The cold winter of Northumberland afforded no obstacle to its propagation; even Edinburgh suffered in February, 1832.

28. The object of writing this book is to record the first entry of a new pestilence into a new country, to be substantiated by positive and precise data. But it was deemed proper to precede this event by a few words on its origin and migration towards the " New World." Therefore it is that we have given the foregoing rapid sketch of a pestilence that has spread its long arms to the four points of the compass, reaching from the place of its birth in the Sunderbunds to the Baltic, and thence into England — the leap-off point from the old to the new continent.

However, before touching on the history of its arrival into the towns and parishes on the St. Lawrence, and its subsequent spread in America, we must not omit a summary and expos^ of the important and interesting opinions of writers on its origin or remote cause. This will constitute the second chapter, in which we shall have to repeat much of the itinerary already stated in this first chapter. After the fourth chapter, we shall trace it — lead, as it were, by the hand — across the ocean into the " New World."

Chapter II. Remote Cause

In this chapter on the remote cause will appear a succinct notice of opinion set forth by non-contagionists, and a history of its march from place to place, and from individual to individual, proving its contagious character.

29, The remote cause of all diseases, especially of pests, is the most important point to become acquainted with; for with this knowledge the practitioner will know what precautions ought to be adopted against the disorder and its spread. With this it is the duty of the magistrate to become thoroughly acquainted, in order to arrest its invasion of his country, and the spread of an infectious disease among his people, since he is appointed to watch over, care for, and protect them. To attain this knowledge, the widest range of research and discussion must be accorded to all men who undertake an examination into the subject. Without a knowledge of the remote cause of a pestilence, no well ordered measures can be employed to exclude the misery it

Will carry into a country, or measures to mitigate its power for evil when once it prevails; without such knowledge, every precaution taken, every means and effort to control it, will amount to confusion, great errors, injurious restrictions, even oppression, while all the time the best and most anxious intentions are in full exercise.

30. In the early days of Indian cholera, practitioners appear to have vied against each other which should be the most ardent argumentator in support of the assertion that the pest was due to something else than contagion.

There always appears to be something peculiar in the medical mind which prompts the votaries of that obscure science to seek elsewhere for explanations than among the simple, every-day facts that strike the common sense of the vulgar. This has ever been the case on the occurrence of every known pest, and never yielded to common sense and observation until the imaginative, metaphysical and argumentative practitioner has been forced to abandon his fine-spun hypothesis.

Let us refer to a few of the pests that have afflicted mankind, and we shall find that the same contentious professional spirit prevailed in every one of them.

31. Plague, as it is emphatically called, is one example, which, until very lately, eminent partisan men, but not the vulgar, attributed to climate, to terrestrial exhalations, filth, etc. Even such men as Baron Desgenettes, a man of unquestioned science, but also a man of crotchets, boldly contended that plague was not contagious; and, to support his assertion, mixed freely among the French infected in Egypt; even went so far as to inoculate himself with the matter of the pestilential bubo; and because he escaped, cited his case as proof irrefragable of his promulgated opinion. Several enthusiastic young French doctors imitated the example set by their admired chief, inoculated themselves, and died. But to the partisans of a theory the infection of the young doctors was easily explained and denied, or rather, ignored; the partisans, whose greatest merit is adhesion to previous opinions, boldly declared that the disease of these young enthusiasts was due to the common unseen cause — an epidemic — and not to the inoculation. Many medical writers appealed to the example afforded by the conduct of the commander-in-chief of the army going among the infected, and escaping. It was gravely asserted that he escaped because he had no fear of the disease. It is well known that Bonaparte, like any other great commander, would venture almost any thing to preserve the confidence of his army, which, if lost, all was lost. This story about fear was one of the stalking-horses much paraded during the prevalence of cholera in Canada and in the United States.