it" in some way or other; and this is the manner in which all
the fables about the propagation of cholera from one district to another
have gained credence. (Nov. 24th.)]

In their efforts to make out their case, there would seem to be no end
to the contradictions and inconsistencies into which the advocates
of contagion in cholera are led. At one moment we are required to
believe that the disease may be transmitted through the medium of an
unpurified letter, over seas and continents, to individuals residing
in countries widely differing in climate, while, in the next, we are
told--regarding the numberless instances of persons of all habits who
remain unattacked though in close contact with the diseased--that the
constitution of the atmosphere necessary for the germination of the
contagion is not present; and this, although we see the disease
attacking all indiscriminately, those who are not near the sick as
well as those who are at a very short distance, as on the opposite
side of a ravine, of a rivulet, of a barrack, or even of a road. They
assume that wherever the disease appears, _three_ causes must be in
operation--contagion--peculiar states of atmosphere (heat now clearly
proved not _essential_, as at one time believed)--and susceptibility
in the habit of the individual. However unphilosophical it is held to
be to multiply causes, the advocates of contagion are not likely to
reduce the number, as this would at once cramp them in their pleadings
before a court where sophistry is not always quickly detected. Those
who see irresistible motives for dismissing all idea of contagion,
look, on the contrary, for the production of cholera, to sources,
admitted from remote times to have a powerful influence on our
systems, though invisible--though not to be detected by the ingenuity
of man, and though proved to exist only by their effects.

Many who do not believe that cholera can be propagated by contagion
under ordinary circumstances, have still a strong impression that by
crowding patients together, as in hospitals or in a ship, the
disease may acquire contagious properties. Now we find that when the
_experimentum crucis_ of extensive experience is contrasted with the
feasibility of this, cholera, like ague, has not been rendered one bit
more contagious by crowding patients together than it has been shown to
be under other circumstances. We do not require to be told that placing
many persons together in ill-ventilated p