burnt; as cats, dogs and horses. The indecency alone of suffering their carcasses to putrefy before the eyes of mankind, ought to make it a strict article of police, to remove them. But they should be buried; no one should be permitted to offend the eyes or nostrils of a citizen. They are offensive to decency, to moral sentiments and to health. The ancient method of burning dead bodies was well calculated to destroy the poison; but in Atlantic America, burial is cheaper and equally effectual. "Common sewers are often common nuisances. In cities, all filthy substances should be conveyed off, on the visible surface of the earth, unless sewers can be so constructed as to deposite, with certainty, all their contents in running water. Serious evils arise from putrid substances lodged in sewers, that are too level, and which serve as reservoirs instead of canals, accumulating putrescible matters, in places where their exhalations, by the influence of moisture, are doubled instead of being removed. "In cities, where all filth is naturally cast by rains into the docks, it would be well that all wharves should be so constructed, as to present a smooth uniform front to the stream, and be extended into deep water. Mud, washed by the salt tides, and not mixed with putrescible matters, produces no inconvenience of health; but such matters, thrown into docks, bare at low water, and exposed to a hot sun, dissolve most rapidly, and generate morbid vapours. Many improvements are yet to be made in our sea-ports, which will lessen the accumulation of pernicious air. "A great and most desirable article in a system for the preservation of health, is, the purifying of rooms from air which has been respired for a length of time. By experiment it is found that the air of rooms that have been slept in, is very insalubrious; and probably more so than the air of privies, which is found to contain less noxious air than was formerly supposed. See Encyclopedia, art. Atmosphere. Indeed, it is questionable whether there is any necessary connexion between offensive smells and insalubrity. Nature has kindly provided that dead feces should not be very pernicious to health; but the effluvia of living and fermenting bodies are to be avoided as rank poison. In this respect cleanliness is made essential to health." REPORT OF THE PHILADELPHIA MEDICAL SOCIETY TO THE BOARD OF HEALTH, ON CHOLERA. WHEN we announced the fact of the Board of Health having applied for information on the subject of Cholera, to the College of Physicians, and the Philadelphia Medical Society, we predicted that the opinions of these two bodies would be decidedly adverse to the doctrine of the contagiousness of the disease. The result has fully verified our predictions. The question of quarantine and other restrictions, the Medical Society has disposed of as follows: In relation to the quarantine and other presumed sanatory restrictions, which have been adopted by the different governments of Europe, as safeguards against the Cholera, your Committee, after a careful and cautious examination into all the numerous facts connected with this branch of their inquiry, would simply state, without adverting to points, the consideration of which it has been thought unadvisable to enter upon in the present report, that all such measures have failed in effecting the grand object for which they were established. In proof of their inutility, we have the experience of the whole of that portion of Europe where the disease has prevailed. In Russia, Austria, Hungary, and by almost every other government, they have been unavailingly resorted to. By Prussia their effects were tried to the greatest possible extent; her rigorous measures being enforced by no less than sixty thousand of her choicest troops-the result is before the world. So far from proving salutary-quarantine and sanatory restrictions, as they are termed, in addition to the immense expenditure they necessarily involve, have, by suspending or interrupting commerce, and depriving of employment thousands of those who are directly or indirectly dependent upon it for their means of daily subsistence, rendered multitudes of individuals and families more favourable subjects of the dis ease. As regards the supposed conveyance of Cholera by means of clothing and merchandise, the following facts, contained in the Report of the Central Board of Health of England, may be adduced as strong, if not conclusive testimony. "There is no question, perhaps, in the whole range of sanatory police, on which so many and such irrefragable facts can be brought to bear as on this; derived, too, from the most authentic and recent sources. "Seven hundred and thirty ships, loaded with flax and hemp, from infected ports in the Baltic, arrived at the different quarantine stations in this country, between the 1st of June and the 3d of December, 1831. "Many vessels, also, arrived laden with wool and hides, yet not a single case of Cholera occurred on board any of these ships outside the Cattegate Sea, nor amongst the people employed in opening and airing these cargoes in the lazarettos. "At the hemp and flax wharves, in St. Petersburgh, where several thousand tons of these articles arrived during the spring burnt; as cats, dogs and horses. The indecency alone of suffering their carcasses to putrefy before the eyes of mankind, ought to make it a strict article of police, to remove them. But they should be buried; no one should be permitted to offend the eyes or nostrils of a citizen. They are offensive to decency, to moral sentiments and to health. The ancient method of burning dead bodies was well calculated to destroy the poison; but in Atlantic America, burial is cheaper and equally effectual. "Common sewers are often common nuisances. In cities, all filthy substances should be conveyed off, on the visible surface of the earth, unless sewers can be so constructed as to deposite, with certainty, all their contents in running water. Serious evils arise from putrid substances lodged in sewers, that are too level, and which serve as reservoirs instead of canals, accumulating putrescible matters, in places where their exhalations, by the influence of moisture, are doubled instead of being removed. 66 'In cities, where all filth is naturally cast by rains into the docks, it would be well that all wharves should be so constructed, as to present a smooth uniform front to the stream, and be extended into deep water. Mud, washed by the salt tides, and not mixed with putrescible matters, produces no inconvenience of health; but such matters, thrown into docks, bare at low water, and exposed to a hot sun, dissolve most rapidly, and generate morbid vapours. Many improvements are yet to be made in our sea-ports, which will lessen the accumulation of pernicious air. 66 "A great and most desirable article in a system for the preservation of health, is, the purifying of rooms from air which has been respired for a length of time. By experiment it is found that the air of rooms that have been slept in, is very insalubrious; and probably more so than the air of privies, which is found to contain less noxious air than was formerly supposed. See Encyclopedia, art. Atmosphere. Indeed, it is questionable whether there is any necessary connexion between offensive smells and insalubrity. Nature has kindly provided that dead feces should not be very pernicious to health; but the effluvia of living and fermenting bodies are to be avoided as rank poison. In this respect cleanliness is made essential to health." REPORT OF THE PHILADELPHIA MEDICAL SOCIETY TO THE BOARD OF HEALTH, ON CHOLERA. WHEN we announced the fact of the Board of Health having applied for information on the subject of Cholera, to the College of Physicians, and the Philadelphia Medical Society, we predicted that the opinions of these two bodies would be decidedly adverse to the doctrine of the contagiousness of the disThe result has fully verified our predictions. The question of quarantine and other restrictions, the Medical Society has disposed of as follows: ease. In relation to the quarantine and other presumed sanatory restrictions, which have been adopted by the different governments of Europe, as safeguards against the Cholera, your Committee, after a careful and cautious examination into all the numerous facts connected with this branch of their inquiry, would simply state, without adverting to points, the consideration of which it has been thought unadvisable to enter upon in the present report, that all such measures have failed in effecting the grand object for which they were established. In proof of their inutility, we have the experience of the whole of that portion of Europe where the disease has prevailed. In Russia, Austria, Hungary, and by almost every other government, they have been unavailingly resorted to. By Prussia their effects were tried to the greatest possible extent; her rigorous measures being enforced by no less than sixty thousand of her choicest troops-the result is before the world. So far from proving salutary-quarantine and sanatory restrictions, as they are termed, in addition to the immense expenditure they necessarily involve, have, by suspending or interrupting commerce, and depriving of employment thousands of those who are directly or indirectly dependent upon it for their means of daily subsistence, rendered multitudes of individuals and families more favourable subjects of the dis ease. As regards the supposed conveyance of Cholera by means of clothing and merchandise, the following facts, contained in the Report of the Central Board of Health of England, may be adduced as strong, if not conclusive testimony. "There is no question, perhaps, in the whole range of sanatory police, on which so many and such irrefragable facts can be brought to bear as on this; derived, too, from the most authentic and recent sources. "Seven hundred and thirty ships, loaded with flax and hemp, from infected ports in the Baltic, arrived at the different quarantine stations in this country, between the 1st of June and the 3d of December, 1831. "Many vessels, also, arrived laden with wool and hides, yet not a single case of Cholera occurred on board any of these ships outside the Cattegate Sea, nor amongst the people employed in opening and airing these cargoes in the lazarettos. "At the hemp and flax wharves, in St. Petersburgh, where several thousand tons of these articles arrived during the spring and summer of this year, from places in the interior, where Cholera existed at the time of their departure for the capital, the persons employed in bracking or sorting, and who generally passed the night among the bales, did not suffer so early in the season, nor so severely, as other classes of the general popula tion. "The same observation holds good with respect to all the ropewalks of St. Petersburgh, and the imperial manufactory of linen cloth at Alexandrofsky, where all the yarn is spun from flax bracked and hackled on the spot." The quarantine of persons has proved equally unavailing with that or merchandise. In evidence of this, the following, among numerous other facts, may be quoted. 1st. In very many villages and towns, to which the inhabitants of cities where the Cholera was prevailing, fled in crowds for shelter, and to which numbers of the sick were also conveyed, no new cases of the disease occurred. 2d. Cases of Cholera have rarely or never occurred in the lazarettos, where the crews of vessels, and individuals from infected parts, have been detained. 3d. In twenty of the most extensive hospitals for the reception of patients affected with Cholera, in India and Europe, no one of the medical attendants, nurses, and assistants, who were, day and night, in close contact with the sick, contracted the disease. In six other Cholera hospitals, of the physicians, nurses, and assistants, employed in constant attendance upon patients, and amounting in all to five hundred individuals, but eight cases of the disease occurred, and in the majority of these the attack was manifestly induced by irregularity, fatigue, or imprudent exposure to cold and damp. 4th. Multiplied instances are on record, where one member of a family has been attacked with Cholera and died, while the relatives and friends, who nursed the patient, even occupied the same bed at night, and performed the usual offices to the body after death, have remained free from the disease. In our next number we shall probably give some extracts from the Report of the College of Physicians, to the same tenor as the above. INFLUENCE OF THE SEASONS UPON MORALS. In a recent number of "Annales d' hygiene publique," M. Quetelet, of Brussels, has presented some curious and interesting facts in relation to the influence of the seasons upon man. By |