Salus populi suprema lex.
In writing the following letters, which I have given in the order of
their respective dates, I was actuated by the state of the public mind
at the time in regard to the dreaded disease of which they principally
treat. The two first were addressed to the Editor of the WINDSOR
EXPRESS, and the third to a Medical Society here, of which I am a
member. The contemplation of the subject has beguiled many hours of
sickness and bodily pain, and I now commit the result to the press in a
more connected form, from the same motives, I believe, that influence
other writers--zeal in the cause of truth, whatever that may turn out to
be, and predilection for what has flowed from my own pen, not however
without the desire and belief, that what I have thus written may prove
useful in the discussion of a question which has in no small degree
agitated our three kingdoms, and most deeply interested every civilized
nation on the face of the earth.
No one, unless he can take it upon him to define the true nature of
this new malignant Cholera Morbus, can be warranted utterly to deny
the existence of contagion, but he may at the least be permitted to
say, that if contagion do exist at all, it must be the weakest in
its powers of diffusion, and the safest to approach of any that has
ever yet been known amongst diseases. Amateur physicians from the
Continent, and from every part of the United Kingdoms, eager and keen
for Cholera, and more numerous than the patients themselves, beset and
surrounded the sick in Sunderland with all the fearless self-exposing
zeal of the missionary character, yet no one could contrive, even in
the foulest dens of that sea-port, to produce the disease in his own
person, or to carry it in his saturated clothing to the healthier
quarters of the town where he himself had his lodging.[17] Surely
if the disease had been typhus fever, or any other capable of
contaminating the atmosphere of a sick apartment, or giving out
infection more directly from the body of a patient, the result must
have been different; its course, notwithstanding, has been most
unaccountably and peculiarly its own--slow and sure for the most part,
the infected wave has rolled on from its tropical origin in the far
distant east, to the borders of the arctic circle in the west--not
unfrequently in the face of the strongest winds, as if the blighting
action of those atmospherical currents had prepared the surface of the
earth, as well as the human body for the reception and deposition of
the poison; but so far from always following the stream and line of
population as has been attempted to be shown, it has often run
directly counter to both, seldom or never desolating the large cities
of Europe, like the plague and other true contagions, but rather
wasting its fury upon encampments of troops, as in the east, or the
villages and hamlets of thickly peopled rural districts.
[Footnote 17: The numbers were so great (to which I should probably
have added one had my health permitted) as actually to make gala day in
Sunderland, and to call forth a public expression of regret at their
departure.]
That it could have been descried on no other than the above line must be
self-evident, but to say that it has followed it in the manner that a
contagious disease ought to have done, in our own country for instance,
is at variance with the fact. From Sunderland and Newcastle to the south,
the ways were open, the stream of population dense and continuous, the
conveyances innumerable, the communications uninterrupted and constant.
Towards the thinly-peopled north how different the aspect,--townships
rare, the country often high, cold, and dreary, in many parts of the line
without inhabitants or the dwellings of man for many miles together,
yet does the disease suddenly alight at Haddington, a hundred miles off,
without having touched the towns of Berwick, Dunbar, or any of the
intermediate places. It is said to have been carried there by vagrant
paupers from Sunderland. Can this be true? Could any such with the
disease upon them in any shape, have encountered such a winter journey
without leaving traces of it in their course?[18] or, if they carried
it in their clothing, the winds of the hills must have disinfected
these _fomites_ long before their arrival. No contagionist, however
unscrupulous and enthusiastic, nor quarantine authority however vigilant,
can pretend to say how the disease has been introduced at the different
points of Sunderland, Haddington, and Kirkintulloch,--no more than he can
tell why it has appeared at Doncaster, Portsmouth, and an infinity of
other places without spreading. Even now, it lingers at the gates of
the great open cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, as if like a malarious
disease, (which I by no means say that it is) it better found its food
in the hamlet and the tent, in fact, amongst the inhabitants of ground
tenements, than in paved towns and stone buildings. We must go farther
and acknowledge, that for many months past our atmosphere has been
tainted with the miasm or poison of Cholera Morbus, as manifested by
unusual cases of the disease almost everywhere, and that these harbingers
of the pestilence only wanted such an ally as the drunken jubilee at
Gateshead, or atmospherical conditions and changes of which we know
nothing, to give it current and power. That the epidemic current of
disease wherever men exist and congregate together, must, in the first
instance, resemble the contagious so strongly as to make it impossible to
distinguish the one from the other, must be self-evident; and it is only
after the touchstone has been applied, and proof of non-communicability
been obtained, as at Sunderland, that the impartial observer can be
enabled to discern the difference.--Still, however, must he be puzzled
with the inexplicable phenomena of this strange pestilence, but if he
feel himself at a loss for an argument against contagion, he has only to
turn to one of the most recent communications from the Central Board of
Health, where he will find that "That the subsidiary force under Col.
Adams, which arrived in perfect health _in the neighbourhood_ of a
village of India infected with Cholera, had seventy cases of the disease
the night of its arrival, and twenty deaths the next day," as if the
march under a tropical sun, and the encampment upon malarious ground, or
beneath a poisoned atmosphere, were all to go for nothing; and that the
neighbourhood of an infected village, with which it is not stated that
they held communication, had in that instantaneous manner alone, produced
the disease. This is surely drawing too largely upon our credulity, and
practising upon our fears beyond the mark.
[Footnote 18: The Cholera in this country would appear always to travel
with the pedestrian, and to eschew the stage coach even as an outside
passenger.]
The anti-contagionist, in acknowledging his ignorance, leaves the
question open to examination; but the contagionist has solved the
problem to his own mind, and closed the field of investigation, without,
however, ceasing to denounce the antagonist who would disturb a
conclusion which has given him so much contentment.--Let us here
examine, for a moment, who in this case best befriends his fellow men.
The latter, in vindication of a principle which he cannot prove, would
shut the book of enquiry, sacrifice and abandon the sick, (for to this
it must ever come the moment pestilential contagion is proclaimed,)
extinguish human sympathy in panic fear, and sever every tie of domestic
life,--the other would wait for proofs before he proclaimed the ban, and
even then, with pestilence steaming before him, would doubt whether
that pestilence could be best extinguished, or whether it would not be
aggravated into ten-fold virulence, by excommunicating the sick.
In my first letter I have endeavoured to unveil the mystery and fallacy
of fumigations, for which our government has paid so dear,[19] and
in place of the chemical disinfectants so much extolled, of the
applicability of which we know nothing, and which have always failed
whenever they were depended upon, have recommended the simple and sure
ones of heat, light, water, and air, with one exception, the elements
of our forefathers, which combined always with all possible purity of
atmosphere, person, and habitation, have been found as sure and certain
in effect as they are practical and easy of application.
[Footnote 19: Parliament voted a reward of £5000 to Doctor Carmichael
Smith for the discovery.]
Of our quarantine laws I have spoken freely, because I believe their
present application, in many instances, to be unnecessary cruel and
mischievous. Too long have they been regarded as an engine of State,
connected with vested interests and official patronage, against which
it was unsafe to murmur, however pernicious they might be to commerce,
or discreditable to a country laying claim to medical knowledge. The
regulation for preventing the importation of tropical yellow fever,
(which is altogether a malarious disease of the highest temperature of
heat and unwholesome locality,) into England or even into Gibraltar,
stands eminent for absurdity. It has long been denounced by abler pens
than mine, and I know not how it can be farther exposed, unless we could
induce the inhabitants of our West India Colonies to enforce the lex
talionis, and institute quarantines, which they might do with the same
or better reason, against the importation of pleurises and catarrhs from
the colder regions of Europe; a practical joke of this kind has been
known to succeed after reason, argument, and evidence, amounting to the
most palpable demonstration, had proved of no avail.
While I have thus impugned the authority of boards and missions, and
establishments, I trust it never can be imputed to me that I could
have intended any, the smallest personal allusion, to the eminent and
estimable men of whom they are composed,--all such I utterly disclaim;
and to the individual, in particular, who presided over our mission to
Russia, who has been my colleague in the public service, and whose
friendship I have enjoyed from early youth, during a period of more
than forty years, I would here, were it the proper place, pay the
tribute of respect which the usefulness of his life, and excellence
of his character, deserves.