or removal to hospital, the source of
despair, will no longer increase the danger. The sick may in future be
attended without fears for one's self, or for those with whom we live."
How delightful is the simplicity of truth! Why, Sir, a morceau like
this, and from an honourable man, let him call himself contagionist or
what he may, is more precious at this moment than Persian turkois or
Grecian gems. Make me an example, men say, of the culprits "who let
the cholera morbus into Sunderland," concealed in "susceptible"
articles!--yes, and that we may be on a level in other matters, destroy
me some half dozen witches, too, as we were wont to do of yore. But
let us have more tidings from Russia to comfort the country of our
affections in the hour of her affliction, when so much craft and
subtlety is on foot to scare her. Dr. Lefevre, physician to our embassy
at St. Petersburg, has just given to the public an account of his
observations there during the epidemic, from which the following
extracts are made:--

"As far as my practice is concerned both in the quarter allotted to me,
and also in private houses in different parts of the town, I have no
proof whatever that the disease is contagious.

"The first patient I saw was upon the third day of the epidemic, and
upon strict inquiry I could not trace the least connexion between the
patient, or those who were about her person, with that part of the town
where it first appeared--a distance of several versts.

"As regards the attendants of the sick, in no one instance have I found
them affected by the disease, though in many cases they paid the most
assiduous attention, watched day and night by the beds of the afflicted,
and administered to all their wants.

"I knew four sisters watch anxiously over a fifth severely attacked with
cholera, and yet receive no injury from their care.

"In one case I attended a carpenter in a large room, where there were at
least thirty men, who all slept on the floor among the shavings; and,
though it was a severe and fatal case, no other instance occurred among
his companions.

"In private practice, among those in easy circumstances, I have known
the wife attend the husband, the husband the wife, parents their
children, children their parents, and in fatal cases, where, from long
attendance and anxiety of mind, we might conceive the influence of
predisposition to operate, in no instance have I found the disease
communicated to the attendants