prevented from extending. Now, admitting to the full extent the
appearance of the disease on one side of the village only--a thing by
the way hitherto as little proved as many others on the contagion side
of the question--still, if there be any one thing more striking than
another, in the history of the progress of cholera, it is this very
circumstance of opposite rows of houses, or of barracks, or bazaars, or
lines of camp, being free, while the disease raged in the others, and
without any sort of barricading or restriction of intercourse. If people
choose to take the trouble to look for the evidence, _plenty_ of such is
recorded. Now just consider for one moment how this famous Russian story
stands: had the barricading begun early, the matter would have stood an
examination a little better; but this man of good intentions never
thought of his barriers till the one-sided progress of the disease had
been manifest enough, _without them_:--and then consider how the
communication had existed between both rows before those barriers were
put up, and how impossible it was, unless by a file of soldiers, to have
debarred all communication:--let all this be considered, and probably
the case will stand at its true value, which is, if I may take the
liberty of saying so,--just nothing at all. Let us bear in mind the
circumstance already quoted from the East India records,--of one company
of the 14th Regiment, at the extreme end of a barrack, escaping the
disease, almost wholly, while it raged in the other nine; and this
without a barrier too. But such circumstances are by no means of rare
occurrence in other diseases arising from deteriorated atmosphere. Mr.
Wilson, a naval surgeon, has shewn how yellow fever has prevailed _on
one side_ of a ship, and I have had pointed out to me, by a person who
lived near it for thirty years, a spot on this our earth where _ague_
attacks only those inhabiting the houses in one particular line, and
without any difference as to elevation or other appreciable cause,
except that the sun's rays do not impinge equally on both ranges in the
morning and evening.

The advancement of the cause of truth has, no doubt, suffered some check
in this country, by the announcement that another gentleman of great
respectability (Mr. Orton) finds his belief as to non-contagion in
cholera a good deal shaken: but we find that this change has not arisen
from further personal knowledge of the disease, and if it be from