“If an example,” says the report, “be necessary to justify this placing of circumstances as cause and effect, we shall find one in the terrible epidemic which desolated the commune of Prades, in the department of Ariège, at the end of the year 1838. Out of 750 healthy and vigorous inhabitants of this commune 310 were attacked with the disease, and 95 died, thus the deaths were 1 in every 3¼ cases. The cause of this epidemic, violent and sudden in its nature, and which broke out in all points at once, is not less evident. It proceeded from a sewer, the receptacle of all the water from the neighbourhood, and of the filth which the water brought with it, and of the dead animals of the district. The hot, damp weather which preceded it no doubt augmented the activity of this focus of infection. The first persons attacked were the women employed in washing linen in this pestiferous pool, and the labourers working in the neighbourhood of it. This terrible epidemic recurred three times, which the invalids in their simplicity attributed to the influence of the moon, but which mainly depended upon the wind at certain periods passing over the infected pool, and bringing the miasma in the direction of their dwellings. If for want of sufficient description it is not possible to prove completely the similarity of the epidemic at Prades with the typhus fever, yet it may be inferred from the symptoms, viz. that when the skin was broken deep sores were formed, and that serous abscesses showed themselves in the lymphatic ganglions, that this disease was very similar to the ancient putrid and malignant fevers formerly described by authors, and which are entirely replaced in our _nosology_ by the typhoid affection. The physicians of Ariège, in order to prove that the disease was not _contagious_, and to re-assure the inhabitants, lay in the beds from which the invalids had been removed.” Adverting to the local reports they have received, the Commissioners state—“These reports have awakened in us the sad conviction that many localities are quite devoid of even the most simple ideas on public health; the inhabitants live surrounded by marshes, drains, stagnant pools, manure heaps, without having the slightest idea of the dangers they are incurring. Indeed, many of them blindly speculate in these heaps of infection, increasing the manure which is to enrich their fields at the expense of their health, and often of their lives.”