uch to
my apprehension it was becoming. The whole neighborhood was alarmed, and
the paleness of death was upon almost every countenance.

My doubts were at length removed, and the cause of trouble, as I then
supposed and still believe, fully revealed. The disease so putrescent in
its tendencies, had originated in animal putrefaction. The circumstances
were as follows:--

The individual with whom the young men who sickened had been residing
and laboring, had laid aside, in his chamber, some time before, quite a
pile of lambskins, just in the condition in which they were when removed
from their natural owners, and had suffered them to lie in that
condition until they were actually putrescent and highly offensive. The
two young men, owing to the relative position of the chambers they
occupied, were particularly exposed to the poisonous effluvia.

I did not forget--I did not then forget--the oft inculcated and
frequently received doctrine, that animal impurity is not apt to
engender disease. It most certainly had an agency--a prominent one--in
the case before us. Perhaps it has such an influence much more
frequently than is generally supposed.

One of my patients, in the family which I first mentioned,--a little boy
two or three years old,--died almost as soon, after being seized with
disease, as his elder brother had done. The rest, though severely sick,
and at times given over to die, finally recovered. Some of them were
sick, however, many months, and none of them, so far as I now
recollect,--with perhaps a single exception,--ever enjoyed as good
health afterward as before.

I had in these families six or eight of the most trying cases I ever had
in my life; and yet, with the exceptions before named, all recovered.
How much agency my own labors as a medical man had in producing this
result, I am at a loss to conjecture. As an attendant or nurse, I have
no doubt my services were valuable. And it was because a good nurse is
worth more than a physician that I so frequently ran the risk of
watching over the sick so closely as considerably to impair my own
health.

The neighbors and friends of the two sick families, as I have already
intimated, looked on in silent agony during the whole campaign;
expecting, first that _their_ families, too, would soon be called to
take their turn; and secondly, that I, the commander in chief, should be
a sufferer, which of course would be a great public disadvantage. They
were almost