saturating the lower strata of the atmosphere in the
sick apartment.]

The puerile stories, therefore, of infection being taken from following
a coffined corpse to the grave, without reference to the state of
grief, fear, and fatigue, not improbably, of drunkenness, in the
mourners, must be unworthy of attention. I am no friend to the absurdly
long interval which in this country is allowed to elapse,[32] even in
the hottest weather, between death and burial; but still more do I
deprecate the indecent haste which would give sanction to panic, and
incur the risk or even the suspicion of interment before dissolution.
In regard to separate burying grounds, should the disease come to
spread, I am sure no one will expect, after what has just been said,
that I should attempt to argue the question seriously, nor enter a
protest against the further gratuitous wrong of withholding the rites
of sepulture in consecrated ground from the victims of an epidemic or
even a contagious disease.--Nothing could warrant such a measure but
want of room in the ordinary churchyards, where police should never be
allowed to interfere with the rights and feelings or property, of the
living, unless to ensure the privacy of funerals; nothing being so
appalling to an alarmed people as the spectacle of death in their
streets, or so trying to the health of the mourners, as tedious funeral
ceremonies amidst a crowd of people.

[Footnote 32: After sending these letters to the press, I saw in the
public prints that the Bishop of the Diocese had forbidden the funerals
of the dead from Cholera to be received in the churches of London.
Instead of thus forbidding a part, better have the whole of the service
performed there (where crowds do not come) under cover from the weather,
than in the open churchyard, where the mourners uncovered, are exposed
in every way to damp and cold, and the jostling of the mob; better still
have all the service deemed necessary, performed at the residence of
the deceased.]

Were I called upon to criticise what I have now written, and to
review all that I have seen, read, and heard on the subject, I would
conscientiously declare that the importation of Cholera Morbus into
England or anywhere else, had been clearly negatived, and its
non-contagious character almost as clearly established, always however
with the proviso and exception of the possibility of its being made a
temporary contingent contagion, amidst filth and poverty