, at page 22.

If a commission be appointed, half an hour will suffice to place before
them, from the medical office in Berkeley-street, the reports alluded to
from the Mauritius, by which it is made apparent that long before the
arrival of the aforesaid frigate, the disease had shown itself in the
Mauritius.[14] What is the public to think of us and our profession,
when vague statements are daily attempted to be passed as facts, by
contagionists _enrages_? One more short reference to Sir Gilbert's
facts.--While referring to the progress of cholera in India, &c. from
1817, he says, in a note, "it is remarkable enough that while the great
oriental epidemic appeared thus on the eastern extremity of the
Mediterranean, the great western pestilence, the yellow fever, was
raging in its western extremity, Gibraltar, Malaga, Barcelona, Leghorn,
&c." Now, it is a historical fact, that, at Gibraltar, this disease did
not appear between 1814 and 1828--_and at Leghorn 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