Already has the problem of the contagious or non-contagious nature of this disease been solved upon our own land; and as sophistry can no longer erect impediments to the due distribution of the resources of this pre-eminently humane nation, it is to be hoped that not an hour will be lost in shaping the arrangements accordingly. What now becomes of the doctrine of a poison, piercing and rapid as the sun's rays, emanating from the bodies of the sick--nay, from the bodies of those who are not sick, but who have been near them or near their houses? In the occurrences at Newcastle and Sunderland, how has the fifty times refuted doctrine of the disease spreading from a point in _two_ ways, or in one way, tallied with the facts? We were desired to believe that in India, Persia, &c., "the contagion _travelled_," as the expression is, very slow, because this entity of men's brains was obliged to wend its way with the march of a regiment, or with the slow caravan: now, however, when fifty facilities for the most rapid conveyance have been afforded every hour since its first appearance, it will not put itself one bit out of its usual course. And then what dangers to the attendants on the sick to the members of the same family--to the washerwomen--to the clergymen--to the buriers of the dead--even to those who passed the door of the poor sufferer! Well, what of all this has occurred? Why it has occurred that this doctrine, supported by many who were honest, but had not duly examined alleged facts, and by others, I regret to say, whose interests guided their statements--that the absurdity of this doctrine has now been displayed in the broad light of day. Make allowance (even in this year of great notoriety for susceptibility to cholera in the people at large in this country) for _insusceptibility_ on the part of numbers who came into contact at Sunderland and Newcastle, with the persons of cholera patients, with their beds, their furniture, their clothes, &c., yet, if there had ever been the slightest foundation for the assertions of the contagionists, what numbers _ought_ to have been contaminated, in all directions over the face of the country, even within the first few days, considering the wonderful degree of intercourse kept up between all parts. But we find that, as in Austria and Prussia, "_la maladie de la terre_" is not disposed here to accommodate itself to vain speculations. _Now_ the matter may be reduced to the simple rules of arithmetic, viz.:--if, as "contagionists _par metier_" say, the poison from the body of one individual be, in the twinkling of an eye, and in more ways than one, transmitted to the bodies of a certain number who have been near him, &c., how many thousands, or tens of thousands, in every direction, should, in a multiplied series of communications and transmissions, be now affected?