wards our fellow men
those duties which humanity prompts, civilization teaches, and religion
enjoins.

POSTSCRIPT.

My friend, Doctor Stanford, of the Medical Staff, now settled here, has
given me the following valuable information, which my own observation
confirms, regarding the agency of panic, in promoting the diffusion of
epidemic disease. He happened to be serving with part of the British
army, at Cadiz, when an eruption of yellow fever took place there, in
the autumn of 1813, and as usually happens amongst medical men, the
first time they have seen that fever, some of them were staunch
contagionists, and impressed that belief upon the corps to which they
belonged. In all these the disease was most fatal to great numbers. The
men being half dead with fear, before they were taken ill, speedily
became its victims, to the great terror and danger of their surviving
comrades; but in the other regiments, where no alarm had been sounded,
the soldiers took the chances of the epidemic with the same steady
courage they would have faced the bullets of the enemy, in the lottery
of battle; escaping an attack for the most part altogether, or if
seized, recovering from it in a large proportion. From this picture let
us take a lesson, in case the impending epidemic should ever come to
spread in the populous towns of England, and the cry of contagion be
proclaimed in their streets. The very word will spread terror and dismay
throughout the people, causing multitudes to be infected, who would
otherwise, in all probability, have escaped an attack, and afterwards
consign them to death in despair, when they find themselves the marked
and fated victims of a new plague. Whatever they see around them, must
confirm and aggravate their despair, for desertion and excommunication
in all dangerous diseases, too certainly seal the fate of the patient.
It will be vain to tell them that hireling attendance has been
provided,--the life of the Choleraic depends upon the instant aid--the
able bodied willing aid of affectionate friends, who will devote
themselves to the task, and persevere indefatigably to the last. If
these be driven from his bed, his last stay is gone, for without their
active co-operation the best prescription of the physician is only so
much waste paper. What, let me ask, must have been the fate of the
patient, and what the consequent panic, if the case of Cholera that
occurred in London, a month ago at the Barracks of