The Sun.
London, England, 1825-06-20 00:00:00

EAST INDIA 1-101ISE, June 17, 1825.

THE COURT of DIRECTORS of the
UNITED COMPANY of MERCHANTS of ENG-
!•AD TRADING to the EAST INDIES, do hereby give

Notice,

That,the QUARTERLY GENERAL COURT of the said
(I)alpany appointed to he held at their House in Leaden-
hall-street, on WEDNESDAY, the 24d Instant, is. made
44:CIAL, for the purpose of laying before the Proprietors,
l'er their consideration, certain Amendments which have
14til made to a Bill now pending in the House of Com-
-41"3, entitled, " a Bill fur further regulating the Payment
of the Salaries to the Judges of His Majesty's Courts in
the Bishop of Calcutta; and for authorizing
tLe TransPoit Con of Offenders from the Island of St.
`• Helena. a

JOSEPH DART, Secretary,

rrliE EtRITISII and FOREIGN TIMBER

;" • and WOOD ASqICIATION.
• Capital X 1,000,000 Sterling, in Shares of £5O each.
limitteas.--Sir Peter Pole, Bart. Thornton, Tree, Down,
and•Scit ; and Messrs. Rogers, Towgood, and Co,
. ,
SbiterTOßs.—Messrs. Dawes and Chatfield.
The Directors will make a distribution of the Shares on
tie 4dlh of June instant, aftr Which day n(1, further appli-
4tifrirs can be received. All Communications are to be ad-
-41.,5%ed to .the Directors, at Messrs. Dawes and Chatfield's,
7)!Angel7mur:t., Throgmorton-street, London.

UlSrf, CON I RAC I. Olt, having submitted
1%, the Scheme full,• uow.begs to solicit attention to its
litr.'ng points, and from the Resolution of Parliarrvnit to abo-
Ql', Lotteries, •BISII much regrets to state, this probably is
1t„,9,45t Scheme he shall ever have the pleasure to contract for.
'llV,,es the Prizes being all in Money, and amounting to
ki,„l);.. HUNDRED and FOUR THOUSAND, FOUR
to the and FORTY-TWO POUNDS, BFII ADDS
411'2e SCHEME SIXTY- FOUR, PIPES of WINE,
IT'S! By this arrangement, independently of the
FOUR

• .£21,000 1!21,000
£21,000
With many other Capitals, and NO BLANKS !
ALI, IN ONE DAY ! FRIDAY, 15th of JULY.
th.Acil,of the Holders of the Four Prizes of £lOOO Guineas, whe-
u°l'ght at BISH'S, or any other licensed Lottery Office,
„ I be entitled to Sixteen Pipes of Wine, and for Shares in
r°l3ortion ; so"that a Sixteenth will have One Pipe of Wine
Item the Stock of any Wine Merchant in the Kingdom, by the
rtunate Holders themselves.
the :Lottery drawn Tuesday, 31st ult., BISII Shared and

AQ. 1004
5446

- in 6 Shares.
in 9 Shares.

Sold
- .00,00t1
£lO,OOO - -
And Seven other Capitals.
Shares of which were distributed all over the United

Kingdom.
li.
t, by
variety of Numbers are now on Sale by BISH, CON-
-0 a 4, Cornhill, and 97 Charing Cross, London ;
, .
MS Agents.

ir 1 INSO N'S ANTI-CO ItItOSION
Ht,tr • PAINT.-74 IL WILKINSON, Manufacturer to
.41 i.„ln• Board of Ordnance, and the' lion. Cotpora!tol
ter c:11°Il, ti 9, tipper Thantt s-street and at the NVorki, sot-
ttiti Ti Bridge, Kent-road., treks, particularly, at this sea-
recommend this valuable and economical Article,
patroniied• by the kincipal Gentry, and
4"ltiel, as the most'effectual Coveting for all exterior
"t Painting on ,Wood, • Iron; Copper, Lead, Stucco,
ttiti,t!".Crutent, and Tiling, to represent Slates, or any ut her
15 equal to Stone when dry. It resists. every
-,t4oh damp, water, or marine acid, preventing iron trollt
not blistering-with t be, sun, nor can it be -"bi"
51, „4:iint.win cover equally well on rough hoards as summit,
I„ir''"rati);rr,"entitizthe-e pence of platting iast coo-
dir:wol` than any' other paint. It may he had, in Casks
~,,,rll2lbs. with the ptepared 041, proper Brushes,
i"."2'ns-for use (which ate o simple, that any person
'", `,lobes The Public are partkularly cautioned against
41,'i1i..c that may bmposed upon them for the genine
tt4l"' 11'"--J. R. W. being a Manufacturer of all other
c:olonts,' begs leave to offer to their notice, Paints
tviCitii,:,,,:tUeCOMllloil.llThrpOSeS. Stone,lnVisi.hleG"rie,tl7:,,Bir,o,a7
.":11 1,54, to 6.45. per cwt. Also,
kiftttekt.pieimtritne, Varnisi,,,,, sperm and Lamp O.ds
ti,,Ptrtor quality •at peculiativ Reduced Prices. le
714".111 'l',:elienee of the Imperal Tuseitn and Saxon Olive
ukviird" uP, and they may he had to quantities (rota-
A libefal Allowance to the Trade.

THE PLAGUE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SIR—An article on Contagion and Quarantine,
by a writer styling himself " An Experienced Physician," ap-
peared in a recent number of one of the London Medical Pub-
lications, the object of which seems evidently to have been to
excite prejudice against the Bill for the proposed Relaxation of
the Quarantine Laws, then in progress through the House of
Commons, and which had been introduced by his Majesty's
Government, in pursuance of a recommendation of a Committee
of that Hon. House. If that article had been suffered to re-
pose quietly in the pages of the Miscellany which gave room to
it, and whose circulation is chiefly limited to medical readers,-
it might have passed sub silentio ; for the stale arguments are
hacknied in it, and on which, for the thousandth time, the
changes have been rung by every believer in contagion, from
its first author, Hieronymus Fracasterais, down to its present
child and champion, Sir Gilbert Blane (who would even rank
the sea scurvy amongst the number of contagious diseases) have
been long since consigned to oblivion by all who understand
the subject. The facility, however, with which it immediately
found its way into one of the Public Prints, and the especial
manner in which the same Print directed' attention to it, para..:
cularly that of Members of Parliament, have induced me to
take some notice of it, in the hope of counteracting, by means
of your very impartial Paper, whatever impression it might
thus have tended to make on its unprofessional readers, before
the measure brought forward for the relief of the commercial
interests of the country, should come under discussion in the
House of Lords.

It must appear to every one who has perused that article,
that it is written in a style of arrant egotism and self-suffi-
ciency, and that its author, in an overweening fondness for his
dotard opinions, has treated with obloquy all who have the mis-
fortune to differ from .him. I apprehend that the " contagion"
of example, like Horace's " Scabiem et contagia lucri" is more
catching than that of plague and fever, by the token, that I
feel a strong itch to retort on the writer some of • his own lan-
guage, and to tell him that the article thereof is " a tissue of
misrepresentations," the more deserving of censure, as they
contain unwarrantable reflections on those honourable Mem-
bers of the House of Commons, who have, so much to their
credit, taken a distinguished part in investigating the question,
as to the validity of the doctrine of a specific contagion in the
plague.
This soi-disant experienced physician, with a modesty be-
coming him, declares that he entertains a very poor opinion of a
person's accuracy, who ventures to differ with him in his logical
deductions, which indeed I must confess have much simplicity
to recommend them ; for the principle which characterises them
is post hoc, ergo hoc. But, in his anxiety to chop logic, and
work a syllogism, he is himself very careless and inaccurate
as to his facts and premises. For instance, he is wrong in his
very first fact. He states that there were twenty-six medical
gentlemen examined before the Committee of the House of
Commons, in 11119, whereas in reality there were only nine-
teen ; and he follows up this fact by another of a similar de-
scription, that, out of the twenty-six medical gentlemen ex-
amined, " all, except two, testified decidedly in favour of the
existence of pestilential contagion." Surely the writer has not
read the whole of the evidence taken upon that occasion ; or, if
he has, he must be one of those persons (and his experience
will tell him there exist such), the tablet of whose memory is
insusceptible, or liable to obliteration of all impressions or re-
collections, except those of a certain cast. Take, for instance,
Dr. Tainsh's evidence. Does this third medical gentleman
utter one word that testifies in favour of the existence of
pestilential contagion ? He was surgeon of the Theseus
frigate,' at the siege of Acre' when five patients infected
with the plague were received on board. One of them had
parts in a state of suppuration. The man who attended these
patients, and washed them, and the barber who shaved them,
communicated generally with the crew of the ship, and so like-
wise did Dr. Tainsh, who applied the poultices to the parts,
and handled the patients. Yet there was no communication of
the plague to any person on board. Dr. Tainsh ordered their
clothes to be destroyed; but in answer to a question, he, unequi-
vocally testifies that he did so merely on account of cleanliness,
and not from the belief that the disease was itself contagious.
Besides Dr. Tainsh, there is the direct evidence of a fourth wit-
ness, Dr. Gladstone, who several times visited plague patients,
and felt their pulses without experiencing any bad consequences
therefrom ; and to the evidence of this gentleman I would solicit
particular attention, because he unequivocally declared, that, if
the plague were a contagious disease, our Quarantine regula-'
tions would have been inefficient to have kept it out of these
Kingdoms.
The writer, amongst other individuals whom he assails with
invective, directs his petulencv against an eminent Barrister,
because that gentleman, so far from thinking that there was any
foundation for another of the writers self-attested facts, namely,
" that the Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, all
but the Chairman, broke up under feelings of shame and dis-
gust at having entertained the question respecting contagion ;"
that Gentleman, I say, from a careful examination and analysis
of the evidence, came to the conclusion, " that it had a bearing
on the question of a very different complexion to what the report
drawn up was calculated to give it." In the first place, let me
ask the writer whether the whole of the Committee, with the
exception of the Chairman, signed that report ; and, if not,
how many did sign it ?—Let me again ask, what interested
motives that eminent Barrister could have for bringing for-
ward " a tissue of misrepresentations and assertions abounding
with false colouring and gross errors," in a work on the laws
of commerce and manufactures ? And, lastly, let me ask whe-
ther he as a Barrister, and " eminent Special Pleader," is not
as competent to sift and decide on the import of evidence, as
those unprofessional men, who were members of the Committee
in 1819 ?—I. \valid advise the writer to consult a very able' work
of Sir Gilbert Mane, on the Elements of Natural Logic, which
has been deemed worthy of the patronage of his Majesty, and
which ought to form the Vade Mecum ofevety medical Idgician
and dogmatist. If I mistake not,- it is in that work Sir Gil-
bert gives the preference, in all cases of conflicting medical
testimony, to a lawyer, accustomed to sift and weigh evi-
dence, rather than to. a physician, who, he says, is seldom
unbiassed by previous opinions and prejudices. But. to return
to the point, is there one sentence of that Author's article on
Quarantine that can be impugned ? The Report assumes the
authority of all the medical men examined, with the-exception
of two, for distinguishing the Plague front other epidemics, by
its being communicable by contact only ; whereas, the article
on Quarantine states that these gentlemen for contact are con-
fined, as much as the Author. can discover, to only three or
four out of the nineteen examined. But really the writer does
not appear to have taken the trouble of comparing the remarks
on Quarantine with the evidence. Chapter and verse are given
for every fact stated; and, as a lawyer, the Author shews that
a witness oftentimes damns his own evidence by proving too
nntch, like some 46 obstinate" sticklers for contagion, in their
evidence before the Committee of 1819, who retailed their hear-
say stories, which like former accounts of the communication
• and propagation of the disease, are too absurd for common
belief..

The writer, for a wonder, admits one fact adduced by the
non-contagionists ; hut the bad grace with which he does it, and
the unsuccessfld attempt he makes to fritter away the import-
ance attached to it, bespeak the reluctance with which he ac-
knowledges it. It is then a fact, that, although that wise and
commercial people, the Dutch, have no preventive regulations,
yet Holland enjoys immunity from plague. I may here say to
the writer, that, ." out of thine own mouth I will jttdge thee."
He tells us, that, " according to the testimony of the excellent
Mr: Howard, the Dutch were unwarrantably careless in guard-
ing against the contagion :" yet, in the next Sentence, he ad-
mits that the last time the Dutch were afflicted with the plague
was so far back as the year 1664; and almost in• the sarhe
breath, contradicting Mr. Howard and hinnielf, he would lead
us to believe thatihitch ships perform quarantine in the 'Medi-
terranean, and that the Government of Holland impose further
restrictions of the sante nature at home: whereas, I, on the con-
vary, assert, without the fear of contradiction, that Dutch ships
perform no quarantine in the Mediterranean, and that the whole
of their home regulations consist in the detention of their ships
fram the Levant for a few days, during which they are twice
visited by a Doctor, and, upon his report that the crews conti-
nue in health, are immediately released, whether with clean or
foul bills or health, without any airing of goods whatsoever.
The writer concludes this " tissue" of inconsistency, re-
specting the practice cf Holland, with a flourishing climax,
that most, if not all the plagues, with which England has been
visited, were believed to have beep imported from that coun-
try. Now; I would asic what evidence exists that the Levant
plague has eveLbeen imported, directly or indirectly into Eng-
land ? It argues strongly against the belief of the last great
plague of 1 within in 1665; having been imported from Hol-
land, that the first cays of it did not occur near the quays, or
custom-house, Or 'amongst the shipping ; but in the crowded and