In 1862 Mr. Gordon said that he saw twenty-three patients at the hospital, and the Sisters of the Hôtel Dieu found twenty there when they reached the lazaretto, and have since admitted three in addition; it does not seem, therefore, as if the “eldest sister of Death” had relaxed her hold on this unhappy village. Yet if the disease can but be confined to this locality, wonders will be achieved. Good care, regular medical attendance, incessant vigilance, with intelligent adherence to hygienic laws, may eventually cause its entire disappearance from our soil. Let us hope that the faithful sisters will succeed in their good work; for we ourselves, every one of us, have a personal interest in it. Unfortunately, this good result is far from certain, as the Abbé Gauvreau desires us to understand. “One or more of these unfortunates,” he says, “feeling the insidious approaches of the disease, and shrinking from the idea of the lazaretto, have at times secretly escaped from Tracadie. They leave Miramichi on the steamer, intending to land at Rivière-du-Loup, at Kamouraska, perhaps at Quebec or at Montreal. As yet no ulcers are visible, nor, indeed, any external symptoms which could excite the smallest suspicion. On landing at some one of the places mentioned they procure situations in different houses, and remain in them for a month or two, perhaps, saying nothing all this time of their symptoms to any one, not even to a physician. They eat with their master’s family, and, even if they take the greatest precaution, they convey this poisonous virus to their masters. When they have reason to fear that suspicion is about being aroused, they depart, but it is too late, and they go to scatter the contagion still further. “The following instance came under my own observation: A youth suffering from this disease, and dreading the lazaretto, went to Boston, where he secured a position on a fishing vessel, hoping that the sea air, with the medicines that he would take, would effect his cure. He soon found that these hopes were groundless, and was obliged to enter the hospital in Boston, where, in spite of the care and attention bestowed upon him by the physicians of the medical school at Cambridge, he died, far from friends and home.” One naturally asks, with a thrill of horror, whether, before the admission of this poor creature to the hospital, he did not transmit to his shipmates the poisonous virus that filled his own blood.