sense, and the good feeling, the activity, and the liberality, which form the most valuable of the national resources, we are satisfied that if ultimate blame shall attach anywhere, it will not be either to English communities as communities, or to English families as families.

:

Let us suppose that the malady breaks out in an English town-for example, Hull. That town ought not to be taken unprepared it should already have made its arrangements-for example: 1. A board of health should have been formed. 2. The town should have been divided into districts, and a district board established in each. 3. An efficient body of police should have been organized; including magistrates, medical officers, attendants on the sick-commissaries-conveyers and buriers of the dead-all prepared to be separated from the community. 4. Contracts should have been entered into, insuring supplies of food, fuel, &c., in case of alarm deranging the operations of the adjoining districts, and the towns-people being exposed to the rapacity of monopolists, which would imply temptation to violence and outrage. 5. The householders should have calculated on a very great addition to the poor-rates. 6. Hospitals for cholera should have been made ready, and the strictest measures adopted for keeping the existing hospitals free from the disease. 7. Burial places should have been inclosed, and furnished with store of lime. 8. Every thing should have been done to ensure a lavish abundance of water everywhere, and there should be depôts of medicine (including wine and brandy), and of lime and chloride of lime, easily accessible, and in every district of the town.

In consequence of the absence of such preparations, the ravages of the cholera in the Prussian capital have been, and continue to be, frightful. It has now established itself in the neighbouring towns, and also (though the government would fain conceal this) in the numerous barracks and camps and cordons sanitaires around Berlin. Every hour brings the intelligence of some valuable life lost to that country-we are extremely sorry to say, that we have just received accounts of the death of that amiable and learned physician, Dr. Becker, part of whose letter to Dr. Somerville was quoted in a preceding page of this Number. At Hamburg, on the contrary, the alarm seems to have been taken in better time. A gentleman who has just performed his quarantine, describes that town as it was a month ago, before the pestilence broke out: Every shop was shut every banking-house-the principal people meeting everywhere to adopt measures-the magistrates indefatigable.' And throughout the German towns generally, things are now in a state of preparation, which ought, without loss of time, to be as

far.

far as is possible imitated here. At Frankfort-on-the-Mame, for example (we speak on the authority of a friend of ours, that has just arrived from that city), the arrangements are complete. The roads are patrolled and strict quarantine enforced. Each street has had, for some weeks past, its cholera committee, consisting of two or three of the chief inhabitants. These gentlemen visit every house daily, to see that rooms are white-washed, decayed fruit, vegetables, filth of every kind removed, and that at least one slipper-bath of tin is kept ready to be filled with hot water, under every roof. Soup kitchens have been prepared in every district. Very large supplies of medicines, and of provisions of all sorts, have been laid up. The medical professors have had their districts allotted to them. Bands of trustworthy persons have been sworn in to act as attendants on the sick. (At Berlin, the servants of families often ran off, and left their afflicted superiors utterly destitute.) Extensive hospitals have been erected in the fields, about a quarter of a mile out of the town; and, in a word, every precaution that two skilful physicians, who had been sent to Wa Varsaw, could suggest, has been adopted under their immediate inspection.

In Catholic countries, the monastic buildings and religious persons have always been of the greatest service on occasions of this description; we have no such resources, and should therefore attend the more closely to the example of Protestant communities such as Frankfort. We believe the regulations of that town have been judged worthy of adoption by the government of Holland, and that arrangements similar to those above described are now in rapid progress throughout the various towns and villages of that well governed country.

Meantime such families as mean to quit, in case of pestilence, the town in which they reside, ought to hold themselves in readiness for immediate flight; and the civil power should be prepared to take charge of the houses and property which they are to leave behind them. The opulent must be content to pay dearly for such protection, but they have a right to expect it.

In such cases the excitement and alarm at the first outburst are so great, that, after a few days, people are apt to follow into the opposite extreme of indifference. We get accustomed to anything; and the progress of the mischief being probably slower than fancy had pictured, every hour the impression gets fainter. It is now that the vigilance of the police is most called for. The people must be saved in spite of themselves. The obtuseness and rashness of the lower orders, on such occasions, are such as none but an eye-witness will believe. At Vienna, the proportion of mortality among the very highest orders has been extraordinary, and is accounted

for

for solely by the vast troops of ignorant domestics which swarm about the palaces of the Austrian nobility. All vagabonds, beggars, and old-clothesmen must disappear. The least semblance of a crowd must not be tolerated; and all public conveyances must be open ones. The cholera took seventeen days to advance one hundred and fifty fathoms in the Mauritius. If due exertions be made, the malady may be arrested and suppressed at this early stage.

When the terror revives,-when the indifference consequent on the first paroxysm of alarm gives way before the knowledge that the disease is indeed creeping on from quarter to quarter, from street to street, the desire to quit the town becomes general, and a new mass of difficulties must be grappled with. The more that go the better; but none must go unless they have the means of conveyance, and know whither they are going, or without the license of the district board; and they that do go must submit to travel under regulations of the strictest kind.

The stagnation of trade becomes, of course, more and more oppressive as the pestilence advances; and they who deal in articles. of luxury would do well to secure their goods in time, in some part of their own premises, and consign the key to the civil power, In case the disease should ultimately break out in the family, their property may thus escape the fumigation necessarily enforced as to all merchandize with which the infected may have been in contact,—and which must in most cases be attended with great damage, in many ruinous.

There should, if possible, be lazarettoes out of town, to which families might, if they pleased, remove,-care being taken that families of the same class, as to manners, be placed together, and that families thus secluded shall abstain from all intercourse with the city. They who have seen out a week or two of the pestilence in any one place should remember that the visitation generally terminates in six weeks or two months, and on no account think of removing. And when the disease is fast disappearing, persons who have been secluded, either in such asylums or in their own houses, must put great restraint on their feelings, and not go out too soon. Such, when the pestilence is believed to have at last ceased its ravages, such is the delirium of joy, and such the impatience of curiosity, that too much vigilance cannot be recommended to the police in the last hours of their labour. Thousands rush into danger in the search of friends,-in the eager yearning to ascertain what link of life has been spared to them.

Finally, a most painful and thorough examination and purification of all infected houses must be enforced on the disappearance of the pest. Owing to the neglect of this, the disease soon reap

peared

peared in Moscow,-and that great city endured its miseries for five months in place of two.

Knowing, as we do, the kind-heartedness of the English nobility and gentry, we can have no doubt that families, not themselves possessed of country houses, would find hospitable gates thrown open to them far and near; while the commons in the vicinity of London, and the numerous parks and pleasure grounds, would of course be at the service of parties disposed to encamp, under proper regulations, and the surveillance of the health police of the next town. Our readers will do well to turn to Russell's Narrative of the Plague at Aleppo, for a lively description of the manner in which certain Frank families encamped at a distance from the infected city, the perfect success of their precautions, and the occupations with which they diverted the period of their seclusion.

We shall now submit a few notes, drawn up for a private family, whom we suppose to have determined to remain in London during the prevalence of the cholera. They are, we well know, far from complete, but they may be of service, if it were but in stimulating persons better qualified than ourselves, to consider the matter in its details, and lay their views before the public.

1. To the utmost practicable extent disfurnish the house, remove ing to an outhouse, or at least locking up in a separate room, all carpets and hangings whatever, and all needless articles of clothing.

2. Get rid of all superfluous domestics; and take care that it shall be impossible for those that are retained to communicate with any one out of doors.

3. Strip entirely of furniture, except bedsteads, &c., one or two rooms for the infirmary,—the nearer the door, the more distant from the apartments of the healthy, and the airier, of course the better. To these alone must the physician and the police inspector have access.

4. Be provided, if possible, with the means and materials for washing and even for baking in-doors; with hot or vapour baths; wines (the best of which seem to be port and sherry); brandy; opium, in its solid and liquid state; calomel; mustard and lintsced meal; æther; some of the essential oils, as cajeput, peppermint, or cloves; and a case of lancets.

5. All windows should be opened and every room thoroughly aired several times a-day. Our fire-places are admirably adapted for ventilating as well as heating apartments; and in their use we have a great advantage over the northern nations, whose stove system has contributed much to the ravages of this pestilence, enabling its virulence to withstand even a Russian

winter.

winter: Chloride of lime should be used to sprinkle all floors occasionally, and a small vase containing it should be in the rooms principally inhabited. Sudden changes of temperature should be avoided: hot days succeeded by cold nights have been found powerfully to predispose to infection. 6. All letters and supplies of food must be received from the police messengers and purveyors, with the precautions adopted in lazarettoes. They must be drawn up to a window of the first floor, by means of a rope having a yard of chain and an iron pail attached to it. Whatever is not injured by wet should be then plunged into a metal or earthen vessel filled with a weak solution of chloride of lime, or vinegar and water. Bread, flour, and anything that would be injured by moisture, should be exposed to the heat of an oven before handling. Papers must be fumigated thoroughly with sulphur.

7. That regimen which the individual has found best suited to his constitution should be adhered to; those who have been used to an active life of course diminishing the quantum of their food in proportion as they are debarred from exercise.* It being universally admitted that whatever disorders the stomach and bowels predisposes to the cholera,-all unripe fruits, watery vegetables, as melons, cucumbers, &c., and all sharp liquors, as cyder, &c., must be avoided The use of the weak acid beer of the Prussians (the weiss-bier) has been found extremely injurious; and the sale, both of that sort of beer and cyder, has been entirely prohibited at Frankfort. Wine should be used, but in moderation. The system should neither be lowered by unwonted abstemiousness, nor excited by any violent stimulus.

8. It is needless to say, that personal cleanliness, at all times of great, is now of vital importance. We need not point out the usefulness of baths. The whole body should be rubbed daily with soap and water, and afterwards sponged with vinegar. The sympathy existing between the functions of the skin and those of the intestinal canal are most intimate. Linen, especially bed-linen, cannot be changed too often.

Those who are obliged to go abroad during the prevalence of a pestilence, ought to know that furs are, of all articles of clothing, the most likely to catch and retain morbific exhalations; that woollen stuffs are more likely to do so than cottons, and cottons than silks. The furs and flannel-bands of the Russians and Poles

*The diminution of bodily exercise, provided the air be pure, is found much less injurious than might be supposed. Women, who take very little exercise, live longer than men.

are