"I have only to add my most entire conviction that the disease is not contagious, or, in other words, communicable from one person to another in the ordinary sense of the words--a conviction, which, is founded not only upon the nature of the disease, but also upon observations made with reference to the subject, during a period of no less than fourteen years. Facts, however, being deservedly of more weight than mere opinions, I beg leave to adduce the following, in the hope of relieving the minds of the timid from that groundless alarm, which might otherwise not only interfere with or prevent the proper attendance upon the sick, but becomes itself a pre-disposing or exciting cause of the disease; all parties agreeing that of all the debilitating agencies operating upon the human system, there is no one which tends to render it so peculiarly susceptible of disease, and of cholera in particular, than fear. "The facts referred to are these:--during two months of the period, that I was physician to the principal hospital at Warsaw, devoted to the reception and treatment of this disease, out of about thirty persons attached to the hospital, the greater number of them were in constant attendance upon the sick, which latter were, to the number of from thirty to sixty, constantly under treatment; there were, therefore, patients in every stage of the disease. Several of these attendants, slept every night in the same apartments with the sick, on the beds which happened to be unoccupied, with all the windows and doors frequently closed. These men, too, were further employed in assisting at the dissection of, and sewing up of, the bodies of such as were examined, which were very numerous; cleansing also the dissecting-room, and burying the dead. And yet, notwithstanding all this, only one, during the period of two months, was attacked by the disease, and this an habitual drunkard, under circumstances, which entirely negative contagion, (supposing it to exist), as he had nothing whatever to do with the persons of the sick, though he occasionally assisted at the interment of the dead. He was merely a subordinate assistant to the apothecary, who occupied a detached building with some of the families of the attendants; all of whom likewise escaped the disease. This man, I repeat, was the only one attacked, and then under the following circumstances." Here Mr. S. relates how this man, having been intoxicated for several days--was, as a punishment locked up almost naked in a damp room for two nights, having previously been severely beaten. From the foregoing facts, and others pretty similar in all parts of the world where this disease has prevailed, we are, I think, fairly called upon to discard all special pleading, and to admit that man's _best endeavours_ have not been able _to make it_ communicable by any manner of means. LETTER X.