They are, perhaps, under an apprehension that they themselves may be affected with the same distemper. They may have a dread of atmospheric contagion, or, as is often the case, may have a presentiment of fatal sickness. They are irregular in the time of taking diet—have often no appetite—are deprived of their night’s rest—maintain long and anxious watchings—and are in general in that feverish state of mind that precludes the possibility of taking due rest. They are deprived of their wonted exercise in the open air, and of that elasticity of mind and body which it imparts. They respire an atmosphere, though not contagious, often, and especially in the houses of the poor, deprived of its oxygen or more important principle, and tainted with the admixture of adventitious vapours or gases arising from the excretions, and perhaps the fermenting of impurities often found collected on the skin. It would be wonderful, where there is a widely-spread disposition to disease, say to fever, if members of the same family, inhabiting the same house, in which one of them lay ill of that distemper, did not take ill, seeing how much they are exposed to it. Nor is it to be thought extraordinary that relatives living in the same locality, but in different houses, or even in different villages, should take the disease also after visiting the house of a sick friend. What has been stated will sufficiently explain that occurrence. Here it will perhaps be permitted to make a slight digression to mention a fact which has given much credit to the doctrine of atmospheric contagion,—the simultaneous invasion of fever among relatives, living together, in different houses, in different villages, and in very different parts of the country. We are aware of several extraordinary instances, where from ten to twenty of the same family were ill, at the same time, of fever, several of whom were living far apart. It is in vain to think of atmospheric contagion being the cause. Possibly that notion might be entertained in reference to those living together, and having communication,—but cannot possibly apply to those in remote and different parts of the country. We know of instances where a family has been seized with fever in our village, and members of the same, living at great distances, forty and sixty miles, have suffered the same distemper at or nearly at the same time, without any communication having subsisted, either by person, by packets, or by letter. These extraordinary circumstances speak of something more than atmospheric contagion. That could not possibly have extended to those relatives who had no communication; and it is remarkable that, in those instances, disease did not go as with the other members of the community, attacking at leisure, now this, now that one, but almost on the same day, many different members of the same family.