There is no man would less willingly than myself introduce profanely the revelations of Scripture. The observations here made are not, therefore, intended for light or heedless controversy; if they have a significance of any import, let them be alluded to in the same spirit with which they have been quoted; if they convey nothing for approval to the reader, let silence rest upon them. To those who would fain disregard my request, let me recall to their minds the veneration which from childhood I trust we have always felt on hearing or seeing those two words--Holy Bible. It is yet to be determined, whether the greenish or reddish appearance of the garment spoken of, as being contaminated with the plague of the leprosy had any specific relation to the disease itself. The priest orders that the garment shall be shut up seven days, and on the seventh day, if the plague be increased, by which, of course, is meant if the greenish or reddish colour have increased, and from which we may gather that a power of spontaneous increase was possessed by the matter, such a result indicated a fretting leprosy, and the garment was to be burnt. Again, though there may have been no increase, but a persistence of the coloured matter after shutting up and washing the garment, it is to {43} be burnt, for it is fret inward, signifying, that the germs of the affection are still there, and may soon increase. Other rules follow in reference to the plague of leprosy, and the mode of deciding whether an article be unclean or clean is definitely laid down, but our purpose is served in mentioning the above, to shew that in the time of Moses the spontaneous increase of certain minute multiplying germs was supposed to have a close connexion with disease. It is equally clear, that the priests were aware by the order given them, that if the ordinary modes of purifying articles of clothing failed in their effect, the safest and surest method of destroying infectious matter was to resort to the practice of consuming by fire all materials capable of propagating an infectious malady. The facts above noticed, accurately correspond to what we now know as applicable to the matter of infectious and contagious maladies. It is a rule, I believe universally adopted throughout the Poor-houses of this country, to put the clothes of all persons about to become residents in these establishments, into ovens, where they are submitted to a temperature incompatible with the existence of either animal or vegetable life. By this means all living matters are destroyed, but the fabrics and inorganic matters retain their properties intact. This simple proceeding, I am credibly informed, is an effectual preventive of contamination by articles of clothing, a desideratum of no small importance, when it is {44} remembered that the diseases among the poor owe much of their inveteracy to the accumulation of effete organic matters about their persons and clothes.