disease by these means;' and now let us hear a little evidencé against it.

'It is a notion,' says Dr. Russell, 'prevalent at Aleppo, that a plague cannot subsist in the city any considerable time without being imparted to the Jews. Many of that nation are employed as brokers and pedlars in most parts of the town, and numbers who deal in old clothes daily pass through the streets, purchasing their wares from all ranks of people. In this manner it is supposed the distemper is transported to the Jewish district.'

And again, says Dr. Russell,

' if substances tainted by the sick should be conveyed into secluded retreats, and persons happen to be seized with the distemper, can it be ascribed not to contagion, but to terror? and the instances here alluded to are not the creation of fancy, but strictly consonant to repeated experience in Turkey.' In another place Dr. Russell says,

'I met with many instances of the disease being communicated by coverlids, carpets, and apparel purchased from infected houses.'

Dr. Pugnet, who was with the French army in Egypt, states that at Jaffa, an apothecary dying of the plague, his neck-handkerchiefs were divided among, and worn by, fourteen persons: all these were seized with the plague, and had bubos in their necks.

The anti-contagionists assert that the plague never was in Holland, although the Dutch have no quarantine laws. That singular but laborious writer Noah Webster has collected accounts of no less than fourteen plagues which ravaged Flanders and Holland at various periods, in one of which, at Delft, in the year 1557, the dead bodies were so numerous that the people fought for the coffins. As to the absence of quarantine laws, if this were true, how happens it that, as soon as England only relaxes her's, and thereby approaches the state of law said to exist in Holland, the several powers of the Mediterranean turn round upon her, and compel every vessel from her ports to perform quarantine before entering their ports?-a conduct which they do not observe towards the vessels of Holland, which undergo no quarantine at all. On inquiring of the Dutch authorities in this country, we learn that the Dutch have quarantine laws, but that, when a vessel arrives from the Levant with a clean bill of health, they are not always strictly enforced. Dr. Granville, who seems to have taken much pains to ascertain the fact, gives the following as the result of his inquiries, in his letter on this subject to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Dutch trade in the Mediterranean, in former times, suffered much from the Algerine cruizers; in consequence of which the Dutch merchantmen trading in the Mediterranean were, from the early ages of the Republic, directed to assemble at

Leghorn,

Leghorn, from which port they sailed under convoy to Holland. This arrangement leads to considerable detention at Leghorn, which, although originally intended as a security against pirates, served in point of fact the purpose of a quarantine, Leghorn being, as is well known, the port of all others in which the quarantine regulations were the most perfect, and most rigidly observed. In addition to this, whenever any Dutch vessel quitted a port where the plague was raging, the Dutch consul at that port refused her a' passe-port de mer,' without which she was not safe in sailing through the Mediterranean, nor was she admitted into Holland.

It would be an endless task to go through what may be called the collateral absurdities in the reasoning of the anti-contagionists -yet we must mention one or two instances. Thus it is said that the doctrine of contagion is selfish and inhuman, and prevents the due performance of the duties of the healthy to the sick; while the doctrine of epidemic diseases remedies the evil. Yet the same persons say,

'People are attacked (with the plague) in proportion as the inhabitants of unaffected expose themselves to the air of affected places. The visits of the inhabitants of an unaffected to an affected place is [are] attended with a certain increase of sickness.'-West. Rev. No. V. p. 145.

Is it possible that they should not see that their objection applies more strongly against this doctrine than against that of contagion; for if the latter teaches us to avoid the sick, the former teaches us to avoid the very air which surrounds the sick. The latter says only, do not touch a patient affected with the plague, or the clothes which he has worn; you may go within a certain distance of him-observe his symptoms-prescribe for him-carry him medicine and refreshment. But the latter says, if you go into the chamber, or the house, or the very neighbourhood in which the disease is raging, you expose yourself to danger.

Another absurdity is, that the doctrine of contagion was a popish trick, and never heard of before the year 1547, when it was invented by Pope Paul III. as an excuse for removing the Council of Trent to Bologna. Two learned foreigners, Dr. C. F. H. Mark and Dr. Omodei, of Milan, have just published most satisfactory refutations of this statement. That of the former is entitled Origines Contagii; that of the latter is contained in the twenty-second volume of the Milan Annals of Medicine: of both an elaborate analysis is given in the Edinburgh Medical Journal. It was hardly necessary to expend so much talent and learning, as these gentlemen have displayed, upon a notion unworthy of serious refutation. As far back as Thucydides and Aristotle, through a long, succession of historians and poets

down

down to Boccaccio, the notion is traced that pestilential diseases are contracted by communication with the sick. Dr. M'Lean is a little sore on this subject, and he has a curious mode of defending himself. When reminded in the Committee of Boccaccio's account of the plague at Florence in 1348, in which the healthy are represented as flying from the sick, to avoid catching the disease, he says,

It is necessary to ascertain the precise date of its being printed, in order to appreciate the authenticity of the doctrines as being those of the writer, or as being introduced by interpolation of editors or commentators.'

What must be the condition of that man's mind who could suspect interpolation on such a subject?

When Dr. M'Lean was examined by the Committee on the doctrine of contagion, he told them that his opinions were founded on an experience of seventeen days; but requested them to recollect how little the value of experience might be commensurate with its duration-that the plague was generally fatal in nine cases out of ten-but that he could cure it in four cases out of five. When asked to what extent he had tried this triumphant mode of treatment, he said upon one patient, and that was himself. When reminded that Dr. Whyte had inoculated himself with the plague, and had died of it, he said that he took it' by a coincidence. When told that the Turks, who used no precautions to avoid the plague, suffer much more from it than the Christians, who avoid it, he said that he did not believe it, because he did not see the grounds for it. When asked upon what grounds he conIcluded that the Turks and Mahometans suffered less than the Christians, he said, not from actual observation, but from the nature of things, and because there was no evidence to the contrary. He said, he would not believe that a person had the small-pox twice, even if he were to witness it; he should distrust the evidence of his own eyes. When asked at what periods of the year the plague at Moscow in 1771 had prevailed and declined, he answered, that his impression was that it began at the usual epidemic season in northern latitudes, and ceased at the usual time. Being thereupon asked what he called the epidemic season at Moscow, he rejoined that it was the same, or nearly the same, as in this country, judging from the pestilence in 1771. So that the plague at Moscow was epidemic because it raged at the epidemic season; and that was the epidemic season, because the plague raged at that time; there is no circle in Euclid, which it would be more difficult to square than this. He denied that Thucydides describes the plague at Athens as contagious; it is true that this is in express defiance not only of that author's positive assertion, but of some

details,

details, occasioned by the contagious nature of the disorder; we infer, indeed, from Dr. M'Lean's cautiously worded answer that he would find a difficulty in reading the original; probably, however, he knows Latin, and as he professes to have formed his opinion from a comparison of interpretations, we would ask him whether he has ever stumbled on rather a spirited and yet faithful translation of that part of Thucydides by Lucretius; or, if his Latinity be confined to the Pharmacopeia, whether he ever looked at the best English translation by one Thomas Hobbes of Malmsbury. These were a few of the precious statements with which Dr. M'Lean favoured the Contagion Committee, and we know not which to wonder at most, the mind of the man who uttered them, or the patience of the Committee who could listen to them. This gentleman has been described by an enlightened member of parliament, as one of those extraordinary persons who will be pointed out by the finger of the future historian! History has two fingers, which she employs for different purposes in pointing out individuals to the notice of their fellow-men; which of the two she will use, if ever she happen to notice Dr. M‘Lean, we will not venture to predict. Judging by his writings and his actions we conclude that he is a man of great self-confidence, zeal, and perseverance; these qualities, when combined with ability, judgment, and knowledge, form the improvers of science, the master-spirits of their age, the benefactors of their species; but when combined, as they often are, with wrong-headedness, and a heap of inaccurate and ill-digested knowledge, they form very absurd, and often very mischievous men. Every age affords examples of both; the latter are not uncommonly mistaken for the former; but time corrects the blunder.

We are tired of refuting errors and exposing absurdities which would require no refutation nor exposure if those, who are to decide, were well acquainted with the facts of the question. We call on our legislators, however, before they consent to abolish the system of quarantine, to pause and reflect on the tremendous importance of the stake; to consider that these barriers were built up by our experienced ancestors, and that we have no experience, who are about to pull them down; that the experienced powers of the Mediterranean behold with astonishment the opinions which have been broached in England on the subject, and in consequence of the relaxations to which our government has already consented, have refused to admit our vessels into their ports without a previous quarantine. We beg them to remember how often, in their own families, they act on the supposition of contagion when the evidence amounts only to a probability; and we entreat them to legislate for the nation on the same principles of wise and

humane

humane caution which they observe in the regulation of their own establishments. If in the details of the present amended system there be any thing vexatious or unnecessarily dilatory, and we are far from saying that there is nothing such, let it receive a still farther consideration, and any remedy be applied, which may appear to be adequate and proper; but we earnestly hope that no individual inconvenience, nor any ingenious speculations, however strongly the one may be pressed, or however plausibly the other stated, will induce our legislature to abandon the principle of quarantine, or introduce any system founded on the belief that the plague is not a contagious disease.

Dr. M'Lean must excuse the freedom with which we have examined his theory, his arguments, and his pretensions. We have written nothing in personal ill will against a man of whom we know nothing except on this question; but this is too important a matter to allow us to weigh any pain, which we may unavoidably inflict on him, against the cause of the public and of truth. His hobby, or his delusion, be it which it may, is not a harmless one, and he must not be indulged in it. We remember, a few years since, a newspaper story, with which, as not an inapt illustration of his proceedings, we will conclude. An odd fellow, a chemist, appeared before the Lord Mayor, begging leave to show experimentally, that detonating balls were quite harmless; and drew half a pound of gunpowder out of his pocket, in which he meant to explode the balls; the Lord Mayor exclaimed loudly against the experiment; but at length, on his earnest entreaty and strong assurances, permitted him to try it with a small quantity of powder. To the chemist's utter discomfiture the powder exploded, he protesting that it ought not to have done so.

If parliament will but enact the part of the yielding Lord Mayor, the plague will not be slow to represent, very adequately, that of the detonating balls; Dr. M'Lean cannot indeed, like the chemist, limit the quantity of his gunpowder, but he will protest most solemnly and most consolingly over the dead and the dying, that the disease ought not to have spread amongst them.

ART. X.-Letter to Mr. Brougham on the Subject of a London University, together with Suggestions respecting the Plan. By T. Campbell, Esq. London. 1825.

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T is difficult, in a country in which public opinion bears a decided sway, to discuss any measure, that is likely to have a wide influence upon society, with feelings altogether unbiassed, or with a tone perfectly sedate and impartial. So many established principles and modes of thinking are shaken by any new method of

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