William Fergusson

“ At a moment when the subject of cholera has become so deeply interesting, the good of the public can surely not be better consulted by the press than when it devotes its columns (even to the exclusion of some political and other questions of importance) to details of plain facts connected with the contagious or non-contagious nature of that malady—a question beyond all others regarding it, of most importance, for upon it must hinge all sanatory or conservative regulations, and a mistake must, in the event of an epidemic breaking out, directly involve thousands in ruin. ”

“ The sick may in future be attended without fears for one's self, or for those with whom we live." How delightful is the simplicity of truth! Why, Sir, a morceau like this, and from an honourable man, let him call himself contagionist or what he may, is more precious at this moment than Persian turkois or Grecian gems. Make me an example, men say, of the culprits "who let the cholera morbus into Sunderland," concealed in "susceptible" articles!—yes, and that we may be on a level in other matters, destroy me some half dozen witches, too, as we were wont to do of yore. ”

“ Now, will any man, not utterly blinded by prejudice, candidly reviewing these facts, pretend to say, that this could be a personal contagion, cognizable by, and amenable to, any of the known or even supposable laws of infection—that the hundreds of the night infected one another, or that the thousands of the few days owed their disease to personal communication,—as well affect to believe that the African Simoon, which prostrates the caravan, and leaves the bones of the traveller to whiten in the sandy desert, could be a visitation of imported pestilence. ”

“ We have the authority of our own Central Board for believing that the disease cannot be conveyed by merchandize of any kind, and that of our mission to Russia for greatly doubting whether it can adhere to personal clothing or bedding; and will it be pretended that human beings, labouring under such a distemper in any form, could have been the vehicles of spreading it in a straight line for thousands of miles throughout civilized nations, armed and prepared to defend themselves against its inroads,—they tried, but in vain. ”

“ No one, unless he can take it upon him to define the true nature of this new malignant Cholera Morbus, can be warranted utterly to deny the existence of contagion, but he may at the least be permitted to say, that if contagion do exist at all, it must be the weakest in its powers of diffusion, and the safest to approach of any that has ever yet been known amongst diseases. ”

“ Even should that worst of true contagions, the plague of the Levant, which every nation is bound to guard against, despite of all our precautions, be introduced amongst us, measures better calculated for the destruction of a community, could scarcely be devised, than the ancient quarantine regulations; for they certainly would convert every house proscribed by their mark, into a den and focus of the most concentrated pestilential contagion, ensuring fearful retribution upon those who had thus so blindly shut them up. ”

“ Amateur physicians from the Continent, and from every part of the United Kingdoms, eager and keen for Cholera, and more numerous than the patients themselves, beset and surrounded the sick in Sunderland with all the fearless self-exposing zeal of the missionary character, yet no one could contrive, even in the foulest dens of that sea-port, to produce the disease in his own person, or to carry it in his saturated clothing to the healthier quarters of the town where he himself had his lodging. ”

“ Thus will public confidence be restored, and thus be verified the homely adage of, "honesty, in all human affairs, being ever the best policy"; for the concealment, or perversion of the truth, however much it may be made to serve the purposes of the passing day, can never ultimately promote the ends of good government and true humanity, but must lead, sooner or later, to the exposure of the delusion, or what would be far worse, to the perpetuation of error and prejudice, and grossest abuse of the people, in regard to those interests committed to our charge. ”

“ From Sunderland and Newcastle to the south, the ways were open, the stream of population dense and continuous, the conveyances innumerable, the communications uninterrupted and constant. Towards the thinly-peopled north how different the aspect,—townships rare, the country often high, cold, and dreary, in many parts of the line without inhabitants or the dwellings of man for many miles together, yet does the disease suddenly alight at Haddington, a hundred miles off, without having touched the towns of Berwick, Dunbar, or any of the intermediate places. ”

“ Facts, however, being deservedly of more weight than mere opinions, I beg leave to adduce the following, in the hope of relieving the minds of the timid from that groundless alarm, which might otherwise not only interfere with or prevent the proper attendance upon the sick, but becomes itself a pre-disposing or exciting cause of the disease; all parties agreeing that of all the debilitating agencies operating upon the human system, there is no one which tends to render it so peculiarly susceptible of disease, and of cholera in particular, than fear. ”

“ There is an old term, as old as the good old English physician, Sydenham—constitution of the atmosphere—and to what else than to some inscrutable condition of the element in which we live, and breathe, and have our being—in fact to an atmospheric poison beyond our ken, can we ascribe the terrific gambols of such a destroyer. ”

“ We could produce no mean authority to show, that a long succession of negative proofs must be received as amounting to a moral certainty; and what greater proof can we have of non-contagion in any disease, than we have in the fact regarding epidemic cholera, as well as yellow fever, that attendants on the sick are not more liable than others to be attacked? ”

“ We have, perhaps, a right to demand from those gentlemen who display such peculiar tact in the discovery of ships by which the cholera has, at divers times, been imported into continents and islands, the names of those ships which brought to this country, in the course of the present year, the "contagion" which has produced, at so many different points, cases of severe cholera, causing death in some instances, and in which the identity with the "Indian cholera," the "Russian cholera," &c., has been so perfect, that all the "perverse ingenuity" of man cannot point out a difference. ”

“ It may be now clearly seen that in India as in Sunderland, the same variety of grades occurred in the disease.
In making my communications for the benefit of the public, it is my wish to spare the feelings of Sir Gilbert Blane; but as he persists in giving as facts often refuted tales of contagion, in order to uphold doctrines which he must observe are tumbling into ruins in all directions, it becomes necessary that his work of mischief should no longer remain unnoticed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Should the dreaded disease spread its ravages throughout our population, I may then, at some future early opportunity, trusting to your indulgence, trespass again upon your columns with further communications on this most interesting subject. ”

“ Another consideration of some importance is the burial of the dead, which according to published reports, has in some places been enforced in so hurried a manner as deeply to wound the feelings of surviving relatives, and in others to give rise to the horrid suspicion of premature interment. Can this have been necessary in any disease, even allowing it to be contagious, or was it wise and dignified in the medical profession to make this concession to popular prejudice, at all times when excited, so unmanageable and troublesome. ”

“ Those who act upon the principle of cholera being a highly contagious disease, may perhaps consider it necessary to recommend, among their precautions, that the medical men and attendants should be enveloped in those hideous dresses used in some countries by those who approach plague patients [7] —fancy, in the case of a sick female, or even of a man of pretty good nerves, the effect of but half the precautions one hears of, as proper to be observed. It is quite a mistake to suppose that the sick have not been sometimes abandoned during the prevalence of epidemics ”

“ As an inducement to us to adopt this as good logic, he assures us that the list of diseases deemed contagious by wise men is on the increase—that non-contagionists are perverse people, blunderers, and so forth! As to his epithets, it shall only be said that among the disbelievers of contagion in cholera, and certain other diseases probably reputed contagious by Dr. Macmichael, are to be found hundreds possessing as much candour, as cultivated minds, and as much practical knowledge of their profession, as any contagionists, whether they be Fellows of a College or not ”

“ 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 ”

“ Macmichael does not exhibit to us what does come perfectly within Mr. Jukes's comprehension, but which is not quite so suitable to the doctor's purpose. This omission I shall take the liberty to supply from an official letter from Mr. Jukes in the Bombay Reports:—"I have had no reason to think it has been contagious here, neither myself nor any of my assistants, who have been constantly amongst the sick, nor any of the hospital attendants, have had the disease. It has not gone through families when one has become affected. It is very unlike contagion too, in many particulars." ”

“ Those who have watched the course of matters connected with cholera in this country, have not failed to perceive, for some time past, the intent and purport of the assertion so industriously put forth—that the disease might be introduced by people in perfect health ”

“ 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. ”

“ That pestilence, despite of quarantine laws, boards of health, and sanatory regulations, has now avowedly reached our shores, and we may be permitted at last to acknowledge the presence of the enemy—to describe to the affrighted people the true nature of the terrors with which he is clothed—and to point out how these can be best combatted or avoided. ”

“ As medical men in this Country employ the word infection and contagion in various senses, I shall, generally substitute transmissible or communicable, to avoid obscurity.
Hence then the importance, to the state and to individuals, of a rigid investigation of these subjects. It is matter of general regret, I believe, among medical men, that hitherto the question of cholera has not always been handled in this country with due impartiality. ”

“ Little do the discussers of politics dream of the high interest of this part of the cholera question, and little can they conceive the unnecessary afflictions which the doctrine of the contagionists are calculated to bring on the nation. Let no part of the public suppose for a moment that this is a question concerning medical men more than it does them; all are very deeply concerned, the heads of families more especially so. ”

“ Even some honest men, from erroneous views as to what they consider "the safe side" of the question, and forgetting that the safe side can only be that on which truth lies (for then the people will know what to do in the event of an epidemic) , openly favour the side of communicability, contrary to their inward conviction; while the good people of the quarantine have been stoutly at work in making out that precautions are as necessary in the cholera as in plague. ”

“ We do not require to be told that placing many persons together in ill-ventilated places, whether they labour under ague, or catarrh, or rheumatism, or cholera, as well as where no disease at all exists among them, as in the Calcutta black-hole affair, and other instances, which might be quoted, fever, of a malignant form, is likely to be the consequence, but assuredly not ague, or catarrh, or rheumatism, or cholera. ”

“ Even when a living product, we are authorised to believe, from observations made upon the plague, that it cannot be propelled to a greater distance than a few feet from the body of the patient—that it is heavier than common air, settling down in a remarkable manner upon the sick bed, and saturating the lower strata of the atmosphere in the sick apartment. ”

“ Others have remarked before me that, though a very common, it is a very erroneous mode of expression, to say of cholera, that it has travelled to such or such a place, or has arrived at such or such places, for it is the cause of the malady which is found to prevail, for a longer or shorter time, at those different points. It cannot be expected that people should explain such matters, for, with regard to them, our knowledge seems to be in its infancy, and "we want a sense for atoms." ”

“ For my part, I shall for ever reject what may be held as evidence in human affairs, if it be not shewn that an individual attending another labouring under cholera, runs no further risk of being infected than an individual attending an ague patient does of being infected by this latter disease. ”

“ 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 any representations regarding occurrences in Europe, connected with cholera, we have seen how, from almost all quarters, the evidence lies quite on the side of his first opinions. ”