India on more than one occasion formerly:--this is
fully admitted by Mr. Orton, an East India practitioner, who is one of
the few contagionists.

[Footnote 4: If the progress of the sweating sickness was similar to
that of cholera, the advice of the King to Wolsey was sound; for instead
of recommending him to rely on any-thing like cordon systems, or to shut
himself up surrounded by his guards, he tells him (see _Ellis's_
letters) to "fly to _clene_ air incontinently," on the approach of the
disease. I use the words _approach of the disease_ occasionally, as it
is a manner of expression in general use, but it is far from being
strictly applicable when I speak of cholera; _the cause_ of the disease
it is which I admit travels or springs up at points, and not the disease
itself in the persons of individuals, or its germs in inanimate
substances.]

For one piece of tact the author of the letter deserves great credit;
for whereas his College collectively, when forming their opinion on the
questions proposed to them by the Council, seemed to throw all India
records overboard,--he, in his individual capacity, as author of the
letter, sends after them all the Russian reports in support of
contagion; for anxious as he is to prove his point, not a word do we get
of the _on dits_ so current in Russia about persons being attacked with
the disease from smelling to hemp arrived from such or such a place;
from having looked at a boatman who had been up the Volga or down the
Volga, &c. &c.: all which statements, when duty inquired into, prove to
be unsupported by any thing in the shape of respectable authority, and
this is now, in all probability, pretty generally known to be the case,
as Dr. Macmichael must be quite aware of.

To the medical gentlemen of India who have been concerned in the
official reports, which do them, _en masse_, so much credit, Dr.
Macmichael is little disposed to be complimentary; and, indeed, he seems
to insinuate that those were rather stupid fellows who did not come to
what he is pleased to consider "a just and right conclusion," as to
contagion; he thinks, however, that he has got a few of "the most
candid" to join in his belief. We shall see whether he had better
reason to look towards the Ganges and Beema for a confirmation of his
doctrines, than he had toward the Don or the Volga. How does the case
stand with respect to one of the gentlemen whom he quotes,--Mr. Jukes,
of the Bombay Establishment? Th