The gaol fever or distemper, of which I shall now give some account, was the natural product of these insanitary conditions. This fell epidemic exercised strange terrors by the mystery which once surrounded it; but this has now been dispelled by the strong light of modern medical science. All authorities are agreed that it was nothing but that typhus fever, which inevitably goes hand in hand with the herding and packing together of human beings, whether in prisons, workhouses, hospitals, or densely-populated quarters of a town. The disease is likely to crop up, as Dr. Guy remarks, “wherever men and women live together in places small in proportion to their numbers, with neglect of cleanliness and ventilation, surrounded by offensive effluvia, without proper exercise, and scantily supplied with food.”[180] It is easy to understand that the poison would be generated in gaol establishments such as I have described; still more, that prisoners should be saturated with it so as to infect even healthy persons whom they approached. This is precisely what happened, and it is through the ravages committed by the disorder beyond the prison walls that we mostly hear of it. The decimation it caused within the gaol might have passed unnoticed, but the many authentic cases of the terrible mortality it occasioned elsewhere forced it upon the attention of the chronicler. It made the administration of the law a service of danger, while its fatal effects can be traced far from beyond the limits of the court-house. Prisoners carried home the contagion to the bosoms of their families, whence the disease spread into town or village. They carried it on board ship, and imported it into our fleets. “The first English fleet sent to America lost by it above 2000 men; ... the of infection were carried from the guardships into our squadrons; and the mortality thence occasioned was greater than by all other diseases or means of death put together.”[181] It was the same with the army: regiments and garrisons were infected by comrades who brought the fever from the gaol; sometimes the escorts returning with deserters temporarily lodged in prison also sickened and died.