William Fergusson - Letters on the Cholera Morbus.

As medical men in this Country employ the word infection and contagion in various senses, I shall, generally substitute transmissible or communicable , to avoid obscurity.

I presume that I shall not be misunderstood when I say, Would that the cholera were contagious – for then we might have every reasonable hope of staying the progress of the calamity by those cordon and quarantine regulations which are now not merely useless, but the bane of society, when applied to cholera or other non-contagious diseases.

The writer of this, who may be known by application at the printer's, when the present excitement is at an end, is not only prepared to show, on a fitting occasion , the correctness of the statements of Dr. Smith as well as those by Dr. O'Halloran just referred to – but also, that in the investigations, in 1828, connected with the question of yellow fever at Gibraltar, facts were perverted in the most scandalous manner, in order to prove the disease imported and contagious: – that individuals had been suborned: – that persons had been in the habit of putting leading questions to witnesses: – that those who gave false evidence have been, in a particular manner, remunerated: – that threats were held out: – and, in short, that occurrences of a nature to excite the indignation of mankind, took place on that occasion; and merited a punishment, not less severe, than a Naval Officer who should give, designedly, a false bearing and distance of rocks.

If the progress of the sweating sickness was similar to that of cholera, the advice of the King to Wolsey was sound; for instead of recommending him to rely on any-thing like cordon systems, or to shut himself up surrounded by his guards, he tells him (see Ellis's letters) to "fly to clene air incontinently," on the approach of the disease. I use the words approach of the disease occasionally, as it is a manner of expression in general use, but it is far from being strictly applicable when I speak of cholera; the cause of the disease it is which I admit travels or springs up at points, and not the disease itself in the persons of individuals, or its germs in inanimate substances.