of the six cantons of Switzerland, which had also seceded, and declared themselves independent; but which the federal government had, in due time, forced to return to the confederation. We showed that, although battles had been fought to accomplish this, the confederation was not the less perfectly restored, and that peace and tranquillity have since prevailed throughout the Republic. Indeed, according to the closest observers, the Swiss cantons, north and south, east and west, were never more cordially united; never more attached to each other, than they are at the present moment. And what sufficient reason is there to suppose that the North and South of the United States will not become equally reconciled to each other? We have always clung to this view of our difficulties; and it remains to be seen whether we were not as nearly right as those who, contrary to the teachings of all history, have insisted that once different sections of a country encounter each other in bloody conflict, reconciliation between them is impossible. We cannot pause now to show that there is scarcely one of the great nations of the world in which such conflicts have not taken place, at some period of its history. Suffice it to remind the reader that they have taken place in Greece and Rome; in France and England; in Spain and Italy.

But our intention on the present occasion is not to discuss the probable consequences or results of the war. We have no fear of a cause so bravely and vigorously defended and vindicated. We hold the armies of the Republic to be fully equal to the task of maintaining the noble structure against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But soldiers as well as civilians need sympathy. The consciousness that they receive sympathy from their fellow-citizens nerves their arms in defending the national cause. Those who are readiest to brave death in the battle-field are often the first to cower before a pestilence. The finest armies of ancient and modern times have been demoralized by this fear, and often when there were no real grounds for it. The rebel leaders are aware of the fact, and they are determined to avail themselves of it to the fullest extent. They affect to have great confidence in the yellow fever, as a means of cutting off our troops; and there are a great many who ought to know better, who accept their representations as facts.

See National Quarterly Review, No. IV., p. 344 et seq.

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The history of all wars shows that, when pestilences do break out, the people, especially those residing in large towns or cities, suffer from them tenfold more than the troops. Indeed, it is after the latter withdraw from the battle-field that the pestilence is most likely to break out, or rage with greatest violence; and this is particularly true of yellow fever. An army attacked in camp by the disease may easily withdraw and choose a situation almost certain to afford fect immunity; whereas the poor of large cities and towns must remain exposed to the infected atmosphere. This was terribly illustrated during the yellow fever epidemics at Cadiz, Gibraltar, and Barcelona. The mortality was ten times as great among the people in each instance as it was among the troops, while the latter were equally exposed with the former to its influence. The British troops stationed at Gibraltar suffered but slightly in comparison with the citi zens. All the physicians, native and foreign, bear testimony to a similar state of facts during the epidemic at Barcelona in 1821. It was the comparative immunity thus enjoyed by foreign troops that first led eminent physicians to the conclusion that the disease is not contagious. Surgeon Doughty, of the British army, the author of one of the books which we have placed at the head of our article, had ample opportunities both at Cadiz and the West Indies to examine all the characteristics of the disease, and the conclusions which he draws are placed in a forcible light in the following extract:

"Let six, or any number of patients, laboring under yellow fever, in its most violent degree, be conveyed to any one of the most elevated places of residence in the blue mountains of Jamaica, and let the same number of persons in health, there residing, be compelled to superintend them throughout the fever, whether of favorable or fatal termination-I feel every assurance, the disease, in that situation, would not be imparted from those laboring under it, to any one of those in attendance. It cannot be propagated in a soil which does not in itself impart the seeds of the disease; and the situations I allude to are exempt from the prevalence of yellow fever.

"Suppose, again, six persons were to come down, in a state of health, from their residence in the blue or higher mountains of Jamaica, or Kingston, Spanish Town, or any place where yellow fever prevails in the autumn or sickly season, remain a few days or a week, and then return, without being attacked, it would be a very extraordinary circumstance, if, on their return home, one or more of them did not become affected with fever. Their residence in the mountains would not destroy the susceptibility to the influence of the morbid cause, as I have shown from facts explained by the destructive fever in the 85th and 55th regiments, which had been some time stationed in mountainous situations."

Dr. Doughty had no doubt that the epidemic at Cadiz was

in all respects the same as that of the West Indies and the United States; that it was generated by a peculiar condition of the atmosphere and soil, and was not capable of being propagated by contagion. He admits that there were no marshes near enough to Cadiz to affect it by their miasmata; but he says that filth had accumulated in the city to such an extent as fully to account by itself for the appearance of the disease; for "the olfactory nerves were assailed with the most noxious exhalations, and the eyes disgusted with every sort of filthy and excrementitious matters thrown indiscriminately into the streets. Fish, bones, rotten vegetables, and rotten matters of every description, mixed together by contents from the receptacles for the night, formed the delectable covering of most of those extremely crowded and ill-ventilated streets." At the same time the heat was unusually great-the thermometer ranging from 95 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The same writer observes that, had the disease been contagious, it must have been communicated to the Isla de Leon, which was only one mile from the infected city, and with whose inhabitants the afflicted citizens had daily an unrestrained intercourse. But he finds a still more convincing argument against the theory of contagion in the fact that it rarely, if ever, communicates itself to the attendants on the sick.

"If, therefore," says Dr. Doughty, "not one of the medical gentlemen, or hospital officers, numbering between twenty and thirty; not one of the orderlies in the Hospicio, where several cases of this fever were admitted; nor one of those in the Aguada, where the greater number of the British troops affected with the disease were placed and treated, and where many of them died, should not fall sick of the same order of fever, I think it is a strong presumptive proof that the bodies of those attacked during the progress of the disease, or after the vital spark was gone, imparted no emanating principle generative of fever sui generis. Even had those in Cadiz been attacked, it would be no direct evidence that they imbibed the infection from the sick, exposed as they must be to the general exciting cause. It is, indeed, surprising that, exposed to the same cause, with the possible additional excitement arising from fatigue in their attendance upon the sick, they should escape; but the fact was otherwise in 1810 to my knowledge."

In the work of Dr. Audouard we find a similar state of facts in regard to the epidemic at Barcelona, at least so far as the army was concerned, and no one had more ample opportunities of observing its peculiarities. He had been

The Doctor's account of his sensations in entering the afflicted city, and his description of the scenes of suffering and desolation which arrested his attention at every step in the more populous streets, are full of interest.

"The barrier opened, and a man who stood behind it took charge of my

sent, with other physicians, by the French Minister of the Interior, for the express purpose of ascertaining the true character of the disease, and he was the very first who ventured to hold a post-mortem examination on those who died of it. Dr. Audouard informs us that, of more than 1,000 soldiers in the citadel, only ten contracted the disease, and of these ten only four died.* All the public establishments, he tells us, enjoyed similar immunity. Even the poor-house, which contained 1,119 persons, was entirely exempt from the disease, and so were five nunneries, which contained, on an average, over 1,000 inmates each, whereas the monks, who had to perform anxious and fatiguing duties, were carried away in large numbers. The whole population of the city he estimates at about 140,000. All who had means left on the breaking out of the disease, leaving scarcely half behind; and of these, between 16,000 and 17,000, or about four-fifths of the whole number seized, fell victims to the disease. M. Audouard candidly

• Rélation Historique et Médicale, p. 365.

It is worthy of remark that Barcelonetta, which may be regarded as a suburb of Barcelona, but which contained no soldiers, save a few sentries, suffered vastly more than the city proper. It seems that, of a population of 8,000, more than one half were taken off by the disease.

portmanteau. The moment inspired me with some painful ideas; I was now within the circle of contagion; an instant before, I was surrounded by a crowd of people but I had advanced only four steps, and now every one avoided my approach. A double barrier, guarded by armed men, separated me from the rest of mankind, and forced me towards Barcelona. My mother, my relatives, my friends, were to me in a different world, and I had no other asylum than that which had become the abode of death.

Barcelona was seen towering above the plain which surrounded it, without any change in its appearance. The setting sun threw its rays on that part of the city which was exposed to my view, and the majesty of the buildings, with the regularity of the fortifications, produced a pleasing effect to the eye: but, under this exterior of the most perfect peace and deep calm, which was increased by the silence of the bells, death continued his merciless ravages among the inhabitants, and pursued unceasingly his mysterious and fatal attacks. In the mean while, I approached the city, and arrived at one of the two gates through which the dead were carried away; and my conductor pointed out to me, on the glacis, two hundred yards from the road, a large square place, inclosed with wicker hurdles, seven or eight feet high, where the bodies were deposited. As I passed, I shuddered at the sight of this melancholy spectacle of human remains, to which carts were continually repairing, for the purpose of removing to the cemetery the population of Barcelona. At length I entered the city, at three o'clock in the

afternoon.

"I traversed different streets, and met with several individuals; some of whom appeared free from any melancholy feelings, while others looked sickly and crept slowly along; and all bending their steps towards the gates of the city, for it was the hour of promenade. Some were furnished with smelling bottles, and others stopped their noses with their handkerchiefs; but the greater part exhibited no marks of fear. These last were principally the lower classes, among whom are generally found the lively spirit, the noisy humor, the

admits that a monk of the order of Minims, named Constans, was more successful in the treatment of the malady than the most skilful and experienced of the faculty. Of nine of his brethren in the convent who contracted the disease, only one died; and probably this one would also have been saved had he taken the advice of the reverend father. The latter began by administering oily emulsions, which were followed by copious draughts of warm diluents, the design of which was, to produce profuse perspiration.

When the same disease broke out in New York, and assumed its most malignant type, far from showing any preference for soldiers, it was remarked by all that it avoided them, and this seemed the more strange because they were princi pally foreigners-Irish and Germans. Most of those who had the means of leaving did so, but of those who chose to remain, and who resided in a clean part of the city, and took tolerable care of their health, very few died. It was the poor and reckless-those who paid little attention to cleanliness or regimen-that furnished nineteen twentieths of the victims. Edward Livingston, who was then (1803) mayor of the city, gives his experience to a friend as follows: "I never remember to have experienced a greater fulness of health than at this period. There is something healthful to a man in the consciousness of a duty well discharged. Notwithstanding the number of the

petulance, the irascibility and the goodness which characterize the Catalan. Many of the houses were shut up, and boards nailed on the doors indicated that they were no longer inhabited. Several shops were open for the sale of articles of the first necessity; but all the work-people had ceased to carry on their occupations, except the carpenters, the sound of whose hammers stunned the ear, and who, though numerous, were scarcely able to supply the required number of coffins. Some bearers on which the sick were removed to a hospital-the viaticum-empty coffins carried along-several funerals, at which the priests recited the service in an under voice-the modest bier, carrying a corpse without pomp or honors-in short, everything which could recall death to the mind was all that gave movement to the city.

"On my way to the residence of the French Consul, I was conducted through several small streets, where I experienced a new and very disagreeable sensation. In every house fumigation of some sort was carrying on; here, they burned juniper, or gunpowder; there, vinegar, sage, incense, and various other aromatics; and further on they were busy in disengaging muriatic acid gas. In these narrow streets, the houses of which are very lofty, all these odors formed a mixture that rendered the air unfit for respiration; and either from such being actually the case, or from the force of imagination, I thought that I recognized the smell of hospitals infected with the contagion of typhus. On reaching the residence of the consul, I learned that, of the five physicians sent by the Minister of the Interior, M. Mazet had died on the preceding evening, that M. Rochoux had, eight days before, retired to the country, and that Messrs. Bally, Pariset, and Francois, were in good health."-Rélation Historique et Médicale, par M. F. M. Audouard, M. D., p. 285-6.