g the dead. And yet, notwithstanding all this, only one,
during the period of two months, was attacked by the disease, and this
an habitual drunkard, under circumstances, which entirely negative
contagion, (supposing it to exist), as he had nothing whatever to do
with the persons of the sick, though he occasionally assisted at the
interment of the dead. He was merely a subordinate assistant to the
apothecary, who occupied a detached building with some of the families
of the attendants; all of whom likewise escaped the disease. This man,
I repeat, was the only one attacked, and then under the following
circumstances."

Here Mr. S. relates how this man, having been intoxicated for several
days--was, as a punishment locked up almost naked in a damp room for two
nights, having previously been severely beaten.

From the foregoing facts, and others pretty similar in all parts of the
world where this disease has prevailed, we are, I think, fairly called
upon to discard all special pleading, and to admit that man's _best
endeavours_ have not been able _to make it_ communicable by any manner
of means.

LETTER X.

At a meeting held some days ago by the members of the Royal Academy of
Medicine of Paris, Dr. Londe (President of the French Medical Commission
sent to Poland to investigate the nature of the cholera) stated, with
regard to the questions of the origin and _communicability_ of the
disease, that it appeared by a document to which he referred, that
1st. "The cholera did not exist in the Russian corps which fought at
_Iganie_," the place where the first battle with the Poles took place.
2d. "That the two thousand Russian prisoners taken on that occasion, and
observed at Praga for ten days under the most perfect separation, [_dans
un isolement complet_] did not give a single case of cholera." 3d. "That
the corps [of the Polish army] which was not at _Iganie_, had more cases
of cholera than those which were there." Dr. Londe stated cases of the
spontaneous development of the disease in different individuals--of a
French Lady confined to her bed, during two months previous to her
attack of cholera, of which she died in twenty-two hours--of a woman of
a religious order, who had been confined to her bed for six months, and
while crossing a balcony, the aspect of which was to the Vistula, was
attacked with cholera, and died within four hours. Dr. Londe, among
other proofs that the disease was not transmissible, or, as