hat 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 L5000 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