manding officer stated to Dr. Burke that," in many of the cases, the men had been griped and purged for several days before being attacked with Cholera." The pestilence continued to prevail at Port Louis and in different parts of the island until March in the following year, when it entirely ceased. The mortality amounted to about 8000,* of which above 1300 cases occurred in Port Louis alone.

Now, with respect to the question of the disease having been imported into the Mauritius and spreading by infection there, the following data will probably satisfy most of our readers. The closing sentence of the report alluded to above, and which is signed by the names of 14 French and 4 English medical men, stands thus:-"La Commission de Santé n'a aucun motif de croire la maladie regnante contagieuse, et cette opinion est unanime parmi tous les membres;" and Dr. Burke, in transmitting the report to the Governor, uses these words :-" Both classes of the profession seem to be unanimous in not supposing the disease to be contagious (infectious) or of foreign introduction." Among the precautionary means recommended by the Commission, no allusion is made to quarantine or other restrictive measures.

We have omitted to notice that Dr. Burke distinctly states that the weather at the Mauritius had been very unhealthy for many months before the appearance of the Cholera; so much so, that the natives had anticipated a sickly season. Some of the cases seem to have been of the most malignant character; for Dr. B. mentions that " he had been called to see some patients who, by their own report and that of their friends, would seem to have been struck as if by lightning." Dr. Kinnis alludes to the almost entire immunity of children from the disease, and to the very small proportion of women who were seized.

In conclusion, it may be worthy to state that, from enquiries which Dr. Burke made at the time, it appears that a disease, very similar to the then existing epidemic, had been known at the Mauritius so far back as 1775-at which period we know that a malignant epidemic cholera existed in India. This circumstance, although certainly not sufficiently authenticated, deserves at least to be mentioned.

What, then, is the evidence respecting the Cholera having been imported into the Mauritius by the Topaze frigate? That a ship, with a crew of nearly 400 men, left her last port without a single case of Cholera on board, but with upwards of 100 on the sick-list from dysentery, hepatitis, and other tropical diseases; that three fatal cases of Cholera occurred during the voyage; that no other case took place before her arrival at the Mauritius at the end of October, or during her stay there; that a few cases of the disease had been witnessed on the island in the month of September; that no fresh cases occurred for three or four weeks after the arrival of the frigate, in spite of there having been a free and unrestricted communication between the ship and the shore; and then, that the disease made its appearance not in the hospital to which her sick had been conveyed, but in another part of the town. Need a single word be added, in

* Dr. Copland says 20,000. This exaggerated statement was first made, we believe, in the Quarterly Review.

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the way of comment or remark, upon this simple enumeration of facts, the entire accuracy of which is authenticated, beyond all reach of doubt, by the written evidence of the medical men, civil and military, resident upon the island at the time?

With respect to the introduction of the disease into the neighbouring island of Bourbon, Dr. Kinnis states, in his report (the date of which is March, 1820), that," after running its course here, it appeared at Bourbon in defiance of the most vigorous quarantine ;" and Dr. Collier, who succeeded Dr. Burke as chief medical officer at the Mauritius, and acted as the head of the quarantine establishment there, mentions in his report, dated some years subsequently, that "Governor Mylius did not succeed by quarantine in shutting out the disease from the island of Bourbon, but that it appeared there in February (1820), and spread there in spite of lazarettos and other precautionary measures."*

So much for the oft-cited case of the Mauritius. We shall now see whether the evidence of those medical men in Canada, who had the best opportunities of becoming acquainted with all the circumstances connected with the appearance of the Cholera there, is more favourable to the importation doctrine so energetically insisted upon by Dr. Copland. The following data are taken almost entirely from a very long and carefully drawn-up report upon the subject by Dr. Stewart, Deputy-Inspector of Hospitals, then chief medical officer in Canada.

The first case of Cholera in Montreal occurred on the 9th of June, and in the person of an Irish emigrant who had arrived that day from Quebec, in the Voyageur steam-boat. This person had landed at Quebec in perfect health, from a vessel in which one or two of the passengers only had been sick during the voyage from Cork; nor was there any Cholera on board at the time of her arrival. On the following day (10th), another emigrant was seized, and "the disease appeared at the same time in distant and opposite parts of the town." It soon burst out everywhere. The first case among the soldiers in the garrison of Montreal occurred on the 12th (June); and, from this date to the 18th, there were 75 admissions into the hospital. In the course of the 19th, the regiment in which it appeared was moved from their barracks, &c., which were deemed un

* We have had the pleasure of conversing with Dr. Collier-who, after a very lengthened period of active service abroad in the East and West Indies, is now resident in London--upon the subject, and we had the satisfaction of finding that his views are altogether in accordance with those which we have advocated in the present article. He is entirely opposed to the doctrine of importation by infection, and feels assured that the extension of a disease like Cholera is quite independent of personal communication. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add that Dr. Collier-as indeed every other medical man who has been in the East--recognises no essential difference between the endemic Spasmodic Cholera of India, and the "Choleric Pestilence" of Dr. Copland.

This steamer had left Quebec, on the preceding day, with such a multitude of passengers that she was obliged to put back and land a number of them there, before she could proceed on her voyage with the rest. It would seem that Cholera broke out that very night among some of those who had been landed, and who had taken up their abodes in one of the lowest and filthiest parts of the

town.

wholesome, and encamped at St. Helen's. From this time the disease may be said to have ceased in it almost entirely. A great number of the men, however, were afterwards affected with diarrhoea and other premonitory symptoms; but, by these being promptly checked, there was no further extension of the pestilence amongst the troops. None of the officers or of the medical men, and scarcely any of the hospital attendants suffered. Few women, comparatively, were attacked; and children were almost entirely exempt. Nearly the whole population of Montreal experienced the influence of the epidemic.

În Canada, as in other countries, the season preceding the appearance of the Cholera had been marked by unusual sickness. Typhus and Scarlatina, of a bad type, had been very prevalent. There was also much blight, and a greater mortality than usual among many of the domestic animals. A report got abroad in the Spring that some cases of malignant Cholera had occurred at Chippewa; but it turned out that the disease, which had proved so rapidly fatal there, was a concentrated form of Remittent Fever. It appears, however, from the testimony of Dr. Robertson-one of the most experienced physicians in Montreal-that he had seen, in the month of April, several cases in which (to use his own words) "the symptoms were exactly the same as those subsequently witnessed during the prevalence of the malady ;" and another of the resident physicians confirmed the accuracy of this statement.

Dr. Stewart very reasonably concludes, from the circumstances now briefly alluded to," and from the rapidity with which the disease showed itself at Quebec, Montreal, and other places in the country, distant from each other, at about the same time that the diffusion could not be well ascribed to the operation of personal communication." He speaks also of "the want of proof of any person having landed from any vessel on board of which Cholera had existed on the passage, before the appearance of the disease in the country," as a circumstance that was quite opposed to the doctrine of importation. The only vessel up to that time, on board of which the disease was reported to have existed, was at the moment moored off the quarantine station, situated several miles below Quebec. It is a circumstance, too, that deserves to be noticed, that a vast number of emigrants (it is said upwards of 30,000) had arrived in Canada from Europe before the Cholera broke out.

Now, with respect to the sentiments of the resident medical men as to the mode of the diffusion of the Cholera, Dr. Stewart says: "In Canada, and I believe I may say in North America generally, the majority is in favour of non-contagion;" and again, "the doctrine of non-contagion is most generally supported." His own opinion is, that it may acquire an infectious property under circumstances unfavourable to health: in other words, he is a contingent infectionist.† He expressly tells us that nothing

*The entire number of cases of Cholera in the troops forming the garrison of Montreal from the 12th of June to the 30th September, was 107; of these, 39 proved fatal. Eleven only of the 107 cases occurred after the 1st of July.

He mentions several instances of particular houses or dwellings appearing to retain so strongly the pestilential miasms, that persons taking up their abodes in them became speedily affected with the disease.

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had been witnessed in Canada, to warrant the suspicion of the disease being transmissible by fomites. One of the closing remarks of his exceedingly elaborate and very valuable report is, that "this pestilence would seem to bid defiance to all attempts to arrest its progress."

The Government of the United States, we should remark, had attempted, in the first instance, to prevent the introduction of the Cholera into their territory by quarantine establishments along their side of the St. Lawrence; but it was soon convinced of their utter inefficacy, and at once abandoned them. The first case or cases that occurred in New York could not be traced to any distinct source or cause of contamination. So the Cholera Gazette of Philadelphia informed us at the time. This official document alludes to the introduction of the pestilence into the New World in these terms:

"From the numbers of emigrants who about this time (June, 1832) had landed at Quebec and arrived at Montreal from England and Ireland, a first impression was created that they had been the means of transmitting the epidemic across the Atlantic. A more close investigation into the facts connected with the commencement of the disease in those cities, served to destroy this supposition. It could not be -traced to importation. The emigrants and lower classes of Canadians were attacked simultaneously in both cities."

It is unnecessary to do more than merely allude to the curious circumstance in the history of the Pestilential Cholera, that it did not visit Spain till the close of the year 1833, and beginning of the year 1834-in which year it also re-appeared in this country and in North America-nor Rome till 1837. How, pray, can we account for these seemingly most capricious outbreaks of the disease upon the theory of importation? Had the communications between France and Spain been so admirably guarded for upwards of a year and a half, that the distemper, which was raging in Paris in the Spring of 1832, was thereby kept from Madrid till the early part of 1834-or how came it to pass that it took several years more to make its way into Italy? Was it shut out by the quarantines on the coast and military cordons on the land? But, without dwelling upon these vagaries in the history of Cholera, let us for a moment call the reader's attention to the curious circumstance of the singularly isolated development or appearance of the disease on board the Dreadnought, Hospital Ship, in October, 1837, of which so interesting an account has been given, by Dr. Budd and Mr. Busk, in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions. Surely no one can, with "unbiassed mind," read their narrative without repudiating for ever the opinion of infection being the chief agent in the introduction and propagation of the malady. Yet, Dr. Copland clings to his favourite doctrine with the most devoted tenacity; but only by shutting his eyes against facts which cannot be gainsaid, and his good sense against his reasonings which it must be most hard even for him to resist. That he is perfectly sincere in his own opinions, we doubt not for a moment; else he would never have committed himself to such confident and authoritative statements as those with which the whole article abounds. For example, in closing his remarks upon the interesting subject which has chiefly occupied our attention, he lays down the following position as one which he has satisfactorily made out:

“This disease is never produced without the presence of a certain leaven or morbific matter, which, emanating from the bodies of the affected, and floating in the air, is respired by those about to be attacked. This is the clear and only inference, connected with its transmission, that can be deduced from the body of evidence now placed before the reader. Those who argue against its transmissible nature, cannot show, since the irruption of the pestilence in India down to its arrival in this country and transmission thence to America, a single instance of its appearance in any place without the previous communication with an infected place or persons, of a nature to propagate the malady."

In another passage, he does not hesitate to assert that the disease, has entirely avoided those who placed themselves altogether apart from the rest of the community ;" and that it has been " barricaded in some towns and shut out from certain districts and streets."

Now, first of all, we would remark that the opening position here laid down must strike every one as very strange :-Cholera never produced without the presence of a poison proceeding from the bodies of the sick! How, pray, was it first generated? If, as Dr. C. supposes, it was a new disease in 1817,-produced, be it remembered, no one knows how-what is there to prevent its arising in like manner during other seasons, and in other places similarly situated? Whether the remark of Dr. Copland, that "there is no evidence to account for the generation of the cholera poison in the first instance, and there is as little of its reproduction de novo on subsequent occasions," is meant by him as an answer to this objection, we do not quite understand. However this may be, it is pretty obvious that Dr. C. is not inclined to push his views upon this point too far; for, in the very next page, we find him saying that "whether this principle (of infection) originated with the first irruption of the malady, or has been reproduced on numerous occasions subsequently-the disease which reproduces it proceeding from a very different cause-is a difficulty which will not be easily solved." With respect to the second position, the weight of the proof, it will be observed, is adroitly turned over by Dr. C. to the adversary, instead of his even attempting to show how the pestilence reached a vast number of places which he has enumerated. But we have not far to go in search of evidence against his view of the question. Two pages further on from the passage just cited, we read:

The non-infectionists argue that numerous instances of Pestilential Cholera have occurred, which could not be traced to exposure, communication, direct or indirect, with those previously affected. This may be the case in a few instances; but how difficult it is to prove mediate infection, or that which takes place through the medium of fomites; and it may be asked, on how many occasions are persons liable to be affected by an infectious principle, without being able to account for the manner in which it took place, or to refer to the individuals whence it emanated, or to the media through which it was conveyed?" True, most perfectly true; and the obvious inference, therefore, must surely be, that such diseases are propagated in other ways besides that of infectious emanations direct from the bodies of the sick. We verily believe that our author stands almost alone among the members of our profession in the extreme and extravagant opinion which he has avowed, that "the extension of Pestilential Cholera in different countries has been entirely owing to the neglect of quarantine and other means of prevention." There is little chance of almost any