Our author begins with observing, that though the infectious nature of the plague had been a question much agitated in the schools, “it was less to be expected that physicians who had been engaged in practice among the infected should have persisted in the opinion that the disease was never communicated by contagion.” Such, however, has been the case. In 1720 some French physicians laboured exceedingly to prove that the plague which then raged at Marseilles and throughout Provence arose from corrupt humours bred in the body in consequence of irregularity in the seasons, and bad aliment; that it was spread by the same means, in concurrence with terror, grief, despondence, or other debilitating affections of the mind; but was neither bred nor disseminated contagion. Dr. Russel mentions in a note, seemingly with surprise, that “_so late_ as the year 1778, Dr. Stoll of Vienna should have written expressly against the doctrine of pestilential contagion.” To this professor he thinks it a sufficient answer to quote the following passage from Mr. Howard on Lazarettos, “It must appear very strange, that he should go back to Livy’s Roman History for proofs to establish his point, totally neglecting all the facts concerning the numerous visitations of the plague recorded in modern medical books, or which had happened during his own time. I suppose professional men will lay very little stress upon all that can be said on pestilential diseases, in general, which happened in wars and sieges two thousand years ago, as applied to the plague properly so called, a disease then confounded with various others from which the accuracy of latter observations have sufficiently distinguished it.”