3. “We observe in camps and hospitals, that those people _whose dirty employments_ subject them in a particular manner to a _depravation of their habits_, seldom escape the present epidemic; and this gives rise to the vulgar expression, and very incorrect notion, of _catching_ the disease. And we observe that others from the slightest deviation from regularity lose the power by which the body resists diseases, and they are also attacked. But these attacks are not to be attributed to infection: for those people who keep the vital and animal powers in uniform confederacy, by temperance and calmness of mind (for fear, by lowering the vital energy, subjects the body to disease) nourishing diet, proper clothing and cleanliness, and keeping a free and regular passage for all excretions, are proof against the assaults of foul and pestilential air. Such people seldom suffer even by the plague itself: while all around them perish.” The first sentence of the above paragraph is so obscurely worded, that it is difficult to know the author’s meaning. I know not of any lawful employment so _dirty_ that it necessarily subjects the person who practises it to a _depravation of habit_. The next ascribes every thing to intemperance and fear; from which, it seems, we are to infer that none but drunkards, cowards, and dirty, naked ragamuffins, are ever seized with epidemic diseases. But of this we are able to bring a direct disproof. I suppose Dr. Mosely will not say that the celebrated Prince Eugene of Savoy was either a coward or a drunkard; that he had a _dirty employment_, wanted proper food or clothes, or was deficient in personal cleanliness; yet, when in the marshy parts of Hungary, he was in danger of death from an epidemic dysentery, notwithstanding that he was so careful in respect of diet, that he had pure water brought him every day, probably from a considerable distance. How came he to be affected by the distemper under such circumstances, while Count Boneval, though as an inferior officer he probably enjoyed fewer advantages, remained free from it, taking only a small quantity of Peruvian bark daily? It is uncertain whether the bark did really preserve him or not; but the case of Prince Eugene plainly shows that sobriety, temperance, valour and cleanliness are not sufficient to ward off an epidemic disease, if people come in the way of infection. 4. “It should follow, if contagion were supported by infected bodies, that no person should ever escape infection (as at Oxford assizes in 1577[87]) who was within the sphere of its action; and that those who were entirely secluded from it, and free from all contiguity to infected people, or substances, as the collegers were in the town of Cambridge, when the plague was last in England, should be exempt from it.