“All these circumstances,” says the French Dr Chervin, speaking of the restrictions and cruelties of quarantine, “are calculated to fill with horror the breast of every feeling and honest man; and we are really obliged to offer violence to ourselves in not giving vent to our indignation against the partisans of contagion, who yet desire to continue to defend their erroneous opinions, and who, to this day, have used all their efforts to make obscure and disfigure the subject, to the great detriment of truth;—who have never ceased to deceive governments, which think it their duty, with regard to this disease [Yellow Fever], to surrender themselves to the judgment and knowledge of medical men,—who have never ceased to describe it as contagious, and have induced those authorities to adopt, with respect to it, the most false and contrary measures, and to neglect the suitable, prophylactic, and _preservative_ means, and others which might have put an end to the disastrous epidemics of this disease;—thus it is they have always acted contrary to truth, to the interest of governments and of humanity.” “I am of opinion,” says Dr Reece, of New York, “that the oppressive features of our quarantine system should be reckoned among the relics of barbarism which an enlightened Legislature should make haste to abrogate for the sake of our character as a people. There is no pretext for the perpetuation of a system founded in ignorance, and fruitful only in public and private injustice, cruelty, and wrong.” “Cholera,” says Professor Caldwell, of America, “though a fatal scourge to the world, will, through the wise beneficent dispensation under which we live, be productive of consequences favourable alike to science and humanity. Besides being instrumental in throwing much light on the practice of physic, it will prove highly influential in extinguishing the belief in pestilential contagion, and bringing into disrepute the quarantine establishments that have hitherto existed.”