Let us look at another disease by the light of recent knowledge, viz., the epidemic influenza, concerning which I remember hearing much talk, as a child, in 1847-48. There has been no epidemic of this disease in the British Isles since 1847, but we may judge of its serious nature from the computation of Peacock that in London alone 250,000 persons were stricken down with it in the space of a few days. It is characteristic of this disease that it invades a whole city, or even a whole country, at "one fell swoop," resembling in its sudden onset and its extent the potato disease which we have been considering. The mode of its spreading forbids us to attribute it, at least in any material degree, although it may be partially so, to contagion in the ordinary sense, i.e., contagion passing from person to person along the lines of human intercourse. It forbids us also to look at community of water supply or food, or the peculiarities of soil, for the source of the disease virus. We look, naturally, to some atmospheric condition for the explanation. That the atmosphere is the source of the virus is made more likely from the fact that the disease has broken out on board ship in a remarkable way. In 1782, there was an epidemic, and on May 2 in that year, says Sir Thomas Watson-- "Admiral Kempenfelt sailed from Spithead with a squadron, of which the Goliah was one. The crew of that vessel were attacked with influenza on May 29, and the rest were at different times affected; and so many of the men were rendered incapable of duty by this prevailing sickness, that the whole squadron was obliged to return into port about the second week in June, not having had communication with any port, but having cruised solely between Brest and the Lizard. In the beginning of the same month another large squadron sailed, all in perfect health, under Lord Howe's command, for the Dutch coast. Toward the end of the month, just at the time, therefore, when the Goliah became full of the disease, it appeared in the Rippon, the Princess Amelia, and other ships of the last mentioned fleet, although there had been no intercourse with the land." Similar events were noticed during the epidemic of 1833: "On April 3, 1833, the very day on which I saw the first two cases that I did see of influenza--all London being smitten with it on that and the following day--the Stag was coming up the Channel, and arrived at two o'clock off Berry Head on the coast of Devonshire, all on board being at that time well. In half an hour afterward, the breeze being easterly and blowing off the land, 40 men were down with the influenza, by six o'clock the number was increased to 60, and by two o'clock the next day to 160. On the self-same evening a regiment on duty at Portsmouth was in a perfectly healthy state, but by the next morning so many of the soldiers of the regiment were affected by the influenza that the garrison duty could not be performed by it."