The New York herald., 1849-05-30

ne Asla&c cnOiera IL the great toptc Vi INC uay'
1t is of those subjects which affect all classes
and conditions of society-the overfed inhab'tant
of tho lordy dwelling in Fourteenth street, and tho
starving wretch in the hovel of the Five Points.
Meetings are held about it in the streets and pub
lie places. Sanitary committees issue their bule-
tins about it, and medical boards, grave as owls,
and about wise those agreeable birds, illumi-
nate the public by innumerable cautions, hints,
directions, and blum sering Of all kinds. Of course
there is great apprehension great unessiness, great
alarm; not little fear and trembling on the part
of Dives, who does not wish to exchange his
palace for the grave, and very little the part of
Lazarus, who heeds not, when, he and his rags are
trundled off the stage in an almshouse coffin
Now, all this feeling of alarm and terror is the
result of ignorance. Just as the progeny of rich
men and wemen, who are consigned to the tender
mercies of barbarian nurses, behold frightful ap-
partition in every object which presents itself in
darkened room, your " children OF larger
growth" left in the dark the subject of the
pestence Of modern times, readily become
alarmed by the phantoms OF their own lmagina-
ton The world and all that it contains-that solar
system of which our planet constitutes SO lnsigni6-
cant porton-together with all those other innu-
merablc systems which fill the immensity which
we call space, are governed by one infinite and i'm
mutable Omniscience, who regulates directs and
controls the whole system, or system of systems,
by general and unvarying laws. Thus, the death
of an insect, the extinction of world, and the ex
posion of planet, controlled by the same i'm
mutable principles. Nay, more-it may sound
startling alike to the unsophisticated to whom
science did ne'er unrol her ample page" and the
philosophers who have SO patiently followed in the
beaten track of their predecessors yet it is highly
probable that the same great principles, to greater
or less extent, regulate the intellectual and physical
phenomena of the habtable worlds. The great
agency of the Almighty, in producing the pheno-
mena of the physical world, is electricity and
some of the most acute and philosophical minds Of
this age are now gradually yielding to the convic-
ton that the same occult, mysterious, all-pervad-
ing influence or essence, exercises controlling
power over those moral and intellectual phenome-
ma which have adorned or disgraced dirty
planet, from the first appearance of the devil up to
the present time.
This is by no means fanciful philosophy. The
pages of history, from Moses to Macaulay, show
that war, pestilence and famine have devastated
the globe at certain intervals, and apparently in
cord9nce with some fixed laws; exhibiting, too, a
remarkable coincidence. In whatever form pestl-
ence has apPeared-whether the ''plague" of
early times, the "black DEATH and Sweating sick
ness'' of less remote period, or the ''smal pox"
and "cholera' of these latter days-it has moved
from east to west, observing pretty much the same
routes, periodicy and disregard of all quarantine
regulations; never going south of the equator, and
evidently originated and controlled by teluric and
atmospheric electricity Singularly enough, these
pestilenta visitations, have just hinted, have
been marked by wonderful synchronism with
great moral and intellectual agitation and convul-
sions, and also with desoating influences affecting
the vegetable world. So uniform, indeed, has been
this coincidence of extraordinary moral and phys-
! cal phenomena, that it has become fixed In the
popular vocabulary Of many nations, and in our
language is recorded in the popular phrase-s'war,
pestilence and famine" But ii is most important
| to notice that the phenomena have not always pre-
sented themselves in the sequence stated In this
phrase. The common explanation of this extraor-
dinary fact in history, is that have naturally
produced the pestllence and famine. To certain
extent this has been the case. But frequently the
order has been just the reverse. We have
the hopes of the husbandmen blasted throughout
vast regions of the earth, and, about the pc
riod, totally unexpected revolutions break forth,
followed by train of most extraordinary intelectu-
al political and social phenomena; the pestilence
coming in the train of ALL and completing the ex-
hibition of the power Of that occult and subtle
agency to which we have ascribed them, and which
we denomnate electricity
There is not the least doubt in our mind that the
Aslatic cholera is traceabe to certain electrical in
fuences operating the of the earth, and in
the atmosphere. This opinion is entertained by
some of the most intelligent and reflective medical
men of the age for there are some medical men
intelligent and reflective. Sir James Murray in a
very elaborate article, which was published re-
Gently in London, enters into very extended ex-
hibition of the results of the experiments and re-
searches which have led him to the belief that all
those pestilential diseases and epidemics which
have appeared amongst mankind have been solely
the result of electrical phenomena and, by sin
guar coincidence, the very same views were pre-
sented to the public in this country, by a writer in
a medical journal published in Boston, who could
,not, by any possibility, have been aware of the
labors, in the same direction of his professional
brother on the other side of the Atlantic The doc
trne Of the contagiousness of the cholera has been
completely exploded, by really scientific physicians.
1t depends on certain electric influences, which
operate with greater or lesser violence, accordingto
circumstances. In the present abominably filthy
condition of this metropolis, with "Medical
Board and Sanitary Committee" who exhibit
all the ignorance and imbecility which usually cha
racterize such organizations, the visitation of the
pestilence is indeed, to be dreaded. The superla-
tive ignorance, or folly, or recklessness, or all COM
bned, of the authorities of the city, in this bus-
ness, must fill every intelligent mind with
dissatisfaction and indignation. They are quite
prepared, quite alert, in the settlement of
question between two dlsreputable pay-actors;
but they are at their "wlts' end" on the approach
of the great plague of modern tunes If the cholera
could be subdued at the same cost that riot was
queled, there would be NO difficulty in tanish-
ing alarm from this metropolis. In that case, un-