oral courage, generous but temperate living,
and regularity of habits in every respect, proved nearly a certain
safe-guard. They found further, that quarantine regulations were worse
than useless--that the gigantic military organization of Russia--the
rigorous military despotism of Prussia--and the all-searching police of
Austria, with their walled towns, and guards and gates, and cordons of
troops, were powerless against this unseen pestilence, and that as soon
as the quarantine laws were relaxed, and free communication allowed, the
disease assumed a milder character, and speedily disappeared.

I say, then, confidently, that Cholera Morbus never will commit ravages
in this country, beyond the bounds of the worst purlieus of society,
unless it be fostered into infectious, pestilential activity, by the
absurd, however well-meant, measures of the conservative boards of
health, such as have been just recommended in what has always been
esteemed the most influential, best-informed journal of England, I mean
the QUARTERLY REVIEW. If the writer of the article who recommends the
enforcement of the ancient quarantine laws in all their strictness, be
a medical man, he surely ought to know, that wherever human beings are
confined and congregated together in undue numbers, more especially if
they be in a state of disease, there the matter of contagion, the
typhoid principle, the septic (putrefactive) human poison or by what
other name it may be called, is infallibly generated and extends itself,
but in its own impure atmosphere only, as a personal infection to those
who approach it, under the form and features of the prevailing epidemic,
whatever that may be. Hence we have all heard of contagious pleurisies,
catarrhs, dysenteries, ulcers, &c., and if the doctrines of that writer
be received, we shall soon also hear of contagious Cholera Morbus with
a vengeance. His exhortations would go to shut up the sick from human
intercourse, to proclaim the ban of society against them, and under the
most pitiable circumstances of bodily distress, to proscribe them as
objects of terror and danger, instead of being as they actually are,
helpless innocuous fellow creatures, calling loudly for our promptest
succour and commiseration in their utmost need. They would go further to
array man against his fellow man in all the cruel selfishness of panic
terror, sever the dearest domestic ties, paralize commerce, suspend
manufactures, and destroy the su