armth. 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