Dr. Rush maintains the same doctrine, and relates that the late Dr. Beardsley of Connecticut, informed him that he had known several black slaves affected by a Consumption, which had previously swept away several of the white members of the family to which they belonged. In these slaves no suspicion was entertained of the most distant relationship to the persons from whom they had contracted the disease: nor had grief nor fatigue, been supposed to have had the least share in debilitating their bodies. The force of so much authority with the evidence adduced, constrains us to admit the communicability of Consumption by contagion. But if this agent has any effect, its action must be extremely limited, and extend no farther than to those previously predisposed to the disease. For daily examples without number occur of the constant attendants upon those labouring under Phthisis remaining perfectly free from that malady. Violence done to the lungs by blows or other injuries of the chest, has in some instances, excited Consumption.[6] Foreign bodies conveyed accidentally into the lungs has produced the same effect. Morton relates a curious case where three nails had passed into a person’s trachea and destroyed him, by inducing Consumption. Bayle also enumerates a form of Phthisis, which he calls cancerous, arising in patients in whom the cancerous disposition has become constitutional. It is, however, extremely rare; only three cases having occurred to him among the 900 whom he had examined. Hæmoptysis and tubercles are mentioned by most authors as exciting causes of Consumption, and remain to be examined. So frequently did Dr. Cullen consider Hæmoptysis the cause of Phthisis, that he placed the latter disease in his Nosology, merely as a consequence of the former. The impropriety of this arrangement has been already touched upon.