Although these precautions are pointed out by the result of long and unbiassed experience, they will in all probability be solely applicable to the plague: for we have every reason to believe that these sanitary measures will not prove efficient against the invasion of cholera, the yellow fever, and other diseases, which are by no means proved to be infectious or contagious. Without entering into the discussion, I feel no hesitation in giving it, as my decided opinion, that the cholera and yellow fever are not contagious. ABSTINENCE. Hippocrates asserted that most individuals who abstain from food for seven days, die within that period; or, if they survive this time, and are even then prevailed upon to eat or drink they still perish. Various instances of persons who have lived much longer without sustenance have been observed. In the records of the Tower we find the history of Cicely de Ridgeway, who was condemned to death for the murder of her husband in the reign of Edward III., and who remained for forty days without food or drink. This being ascribed to a miracle, she was of course pardoned. From the result of this starvation, the story may be considered fabulous for two reasons: first, from the improbability of the alleged abstinence; and, secondly, from the selection of forty days, a period clearly fixed upon for miracle-making, being the exact number of days our Saviour fasted. We have a better authenticated case in the one mentioned by Dr. Eccles in the Edinburgh Medical Essays for 1720. The starved person was a beautiful young lady, about sixteen years of age, who, in consequence of the sudden death of her father, was thrown into a state of tetanus (lock-jaw) so violent as to render her incapable of swallowing for two long and distinct periods,--the first of thirty-four, and the second of fifty-four days,--during which she neither experienced a sense of hunger nor of thirst, and when she recovered, she was scarcely reduced in size. Sir William Hamilton saw a girl, sixteen years of age, who was extricated from the ruins of a house at Oppido, in which she had remained eleven days: an infant in her arms, but a few months old, had died on the fourth day, as the young are not so able to endure abstinence. Dr. Willan attended a young man who had abstained from any sustenance except a little water flavoured with orange-juice for sixty days: death ensued a fortnight after. Fodere mentions some workmen who were extricated alive from a cold damp cavern, in which they had been immured under a ruin for fourteen days. Cetois, a physician of Poitiers, relates a still more singular case of total abstinence in a girl, who, from the age of eleven to that of fourteen, took no nourishment.