coveries, the actual amount of disease is probably greater than ever it was. The doctors are even quarrelling among themselves, whether certain illnesses are contagious or non-contagious. There is no doubt that scarlatina is contagious; but, at the time of the illness of the Prince of Wales, it was sharply debated whether typhoid fever was infectious or not. Even the fact of such a discussion is hardly creditable, for it might have been thought that scientific men, by a scientific induction of facts, could have set such a question at rest by this time. But we feel quite certain, especially in days when people travel and sojourn away from home, that no case of illness should be found to exist which any opinion entitled to respect should consider infectious, but it should be surrounded with safeguards, and so be saved from becoming the source of those terrible domestic tragedies with which we are all so unhappily familiar.
We have now brought our readers to a point to which we have been working up in the course of this paper, a point of extreme practical importance and urgency, on which the opinions of the public and their suffrages should be collected. We wish to draw more particular attention to a subject which we have just lightly touched on, one which we believe cannot be too much ventilated and discussed among general readers, and on which they are qualified to form an opinion, and to take action upon it. The theory involved is extremely simple and interesting, albeit strictly scientific; but the practical importance of it is enormous. Somewhere in the dim perspective many of us can discern the promise of a golden age, when all curable accidents will be cured, and all preventible diseases will be prevented. There can be no doubt but a simple contagious disease is susceptible of being stamped out. We stamped out the cattle-plague, and, if the plagues of men touched the same obvious and immediate pecuniary interests as the plagues of cattle, we might stamp out similar calamities among human beings. To a certain extent the history of the small-pox shows how much can be done this way. In the remarks we are about to make we most especially acknowledge our obligations to Dr. William Budd's writings and teachings on the subject, who has developed his views, full of import to the happiness and well-being of humanity, with immense ability and experience, and much literary skill. The theory is, that any contagious disease can be eradicated; or, at all events, limited within a very slender area; and that various diseases are in reality contagious, such as typhoid fever and consumption, where the ordinary medical and general mind does not admit the fact of the contagiousness. If we resort to the primitive processes of counting noses, or listening for the largest amount of shouting, we shall decide against the theory; but at present legitimate argument and logical deduction appear to be in its favor.
Mr. Disraeli's policy was lately denounced as a policy of sewage. What has been called by some a policy of sewage, has been more
