“With respect to the importation of the disease into various places, except in one instance, and that even is surrounded with doubts (I mean that of Her Majesty’s sloop ‘Bann’), I entirely disbelieve it. Both the surgeons of Bermuda Hospital most distinctly deny on two occasions that the epidemic which prevailed in 1843 was imported or contagious; I have also caused the medical reports of Jamaica Hospital for more than twenty years to be examined; and though hundreds of patients with yellow fever in all its most appalling forms, including black vomit, &c., have been treated in that establishment, not one of the medical officers in charge of the hospital have ever hinted at the disease being contagious; and if it be needful I can cite numerous other instances.” As to the apprehension that the crew of the “Eclair” might have imported the disease into England, he says:— “I have no hesitation in declaring my firm belief that the sick men of the ‘Eclair’ when that ship arrived at the Motherbank, might have been landed at Haslar Hospital and placed in the well-ventilated wards of that establishment without the public health suffering in the smallest degree. It is a fact well known, and of the truth of which I can give the most satisfactory proof, that during the autumn of every year merchant-ships arrive in our harbours loaded with the produce of the coast of Africa, having perhaps lost great part, nay in some instances the whole, of their crew by the fever of the country; or some are still labouring under fever when the ship arrives in the Thames, and are sent to the hospital in that state; yet no instance is known of any infection having been produced by such procedure; in fact it is perfectly certain that it never did take place.” Dr King, who says:— “The inhabitants in general are firmly persuaded that the fever was imported by the ‘Eclair’ and afterwards spread throughout the island by contagion from one person to another. I have taken considerable pains to trace out and discover the supposed morbid concatenation, but in vain. It becomes, therefore, a duty to express my opinion decidedly, that there is no satisfactory proof of the disease having been propagated by contagion, or from a specific poison which is said to emanate from the bodies of the sick, the dying, or the dead.” The case of the “Eclair,” as has been already stated, is the one on which the greatest reliance is placed in proof of the importation of epidemic disease. * * * * * It is needful to advert to one instance more of alleged importation; namely, the introduction of the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1828 into the Garrison of Gibraltar by the ship “Dygden.” This case has been more rigorously examined than any other, and on that account it exhibits a better specimen than can usually be obtained of the manner in which the evidence for these cases is commonly got up.