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 r^ic^u^^c^ jy^
 
 Prof. HENRY BRONSON, M.D.
 
 At a regular meeting of the New Haven Colony Historical 
 Society held Monday evening, May 26, 1894, the following 
 vote was unanimously adopted : 
 
 Voted, That Stephen G. Hubbard, M.D., be requested by 
 this society to prepare a paper commemorative of the profes- 
 sional and personal character of the late Henry Bronson, M.D., 
 and of the service he rendered this society by his valuable 
 contributions to its historical publications. 
 
 In compliance with the above request a paper on the fore- 
 going subject was prepared by Dr. Hubbard and read by him 
 at a meeting of this society, held on the evening of May 27, 
 1895. I'lie meeting passed a vote of thanks to Dr. Hubbard, 
 and requested him to furnish a copy for publication by the 
 
 society. 
 
 He;nry T. Blake, 
 
 Sec. N. H. Col. Hist. Society.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 OF THE 
 
 IvlFE AND WRITINGS 
 
 OF THE I,ATE 
 
 PROFESSOR HENRY BRONSON, M.D. 
 
 BY 
 
 Dr. Stephen G. Hubbard. 
 
 Read before the New Haven Colony Historical Society, by invitation, 
 May 27tli, 1895. 
 
 ^npHE life and charadler of him in whose memory 
 we are now assembled, have peculiar claims to 
 honorable mention by the wise and good in this com- 
 munity ; and particularly by his associates in this 
 society, of which he was one of the corporate mem- 
 bers. 
 
 He was known as a quiet, unobtrusive gentleman 
 of high charadler and distinguished attainments — as 
 a man of few words, but of dire6l and honest thought 
 — and as an advocate of whatever he regarded as 
 abstradl truth.
 
 He came to us in the full development of his intel- 
 ledlual faculties, at a time when he impressed all 
 with whom he came in contacfl, as a man of rare 
 powers of observation, and of acute mental percep- 
 tions — of broad and liberal \'iews of public affairs — as 
 a close and logical reasoner, and a lover of equity. 
 Touching this community and the State at so many 
 points as he did, and lea\dng upon every side the 
 impress of a noble character, the beneficial but un- 
 conscious influence of which still remains an active 
 living force, I can but feel, gentlemen, that in 
 accepting your in\ntation, I have assumed a difficult 
 but honorable and most pleasing duty, in attempting 
 to speak fittingly here of his great A^-isdom, and of 
 his many virtues.
 
 HENRY BRONSON 
 
 Was bom in Waterbury on tbe 30tli of January, 1804. 
 He died in tbis city of tbe accumulated infirmities of 
 age on tbe 26tb of November, 1893. Like most of 
 tbe boys of New England of tbat day, bis early 
 youtb was spent in assisting bis fatber in tbe cares 
 of tbe farm, and in acquiring sucb an education as 
 was afforded bim in tbe common distri(5l scbool of 
 tbe town, supplemented by tuition at tbe Hopkins 
 Grammar Scbool in tbis city. Witb tbese slender 
 opportunities of acquiring knowledge be developed a 
 remarkable love for letters, wbicb continued tbrougb 
 a long life, and caused bim during tbe earlier years 
 of bis pupilage to expend for books all of bis avail- 
 able resources. 
 
 At tbe age of 17 or 18 years, a period wben most 
 farmers' sons, unable to endure tbe rigorous climate, 
 and tbe severity of discipline administered to tbem, 
 after wbicb so few lived to be quoted as examples of 
 tbe *' survival of tbe fittest," be began to sbrink in 
 form, and to deteriorate in pbysical vigor. His 
 bealtb, never strong, became delicate, and tbe occu- 
 pations of tbe farm grew more and more distasteful 
 to bim ; so tbat, wben tbe time came tbat be must
 
 choose for himself a calling for life, he fully realized 
 that the ancestral acres had for him no charms. 
 
 His father, Bennet Bronson, Yale 1797, was a 
 law^-er b}- profession in Waterburj-, and was for 
 man}' 3'ears a Judge of the County Court — he was 
 also a large landed proprietor, and a man of wealth 
 and influence. Judge Bronson had alread}- sent two 
 sons to Yale College, both of whom died young, and 
 it was the desire of his heart that this son would 
 remain at home, and take charge of the estate. 
 
 But, the intelleAual life of the son, so far from 
 being satisfied in its demands b}^ the attractions of a 
 pastoral existence, longed for the mental stimulus 
 and growth to be gained b}- professional stud}- ; and 
 it was only after a critical anal^'sis of his own powers, 
 and a careful balancing of the arguments for and 
 against his natural preference, that he finalh' adopted 
 for his ultimate pursuit the profession of medicine. 
 
 Well knowing his father's long cherished hopes 
 and desires that his son would become so much 
 attached to countrj^ life that he would adopt agricul- 
 ture as a profession, — and kno\ving also his father's 
 natural intolerance of opposition to his wishes, — and 
 owing to his own native modest}- and retiring dispo- 
 sition, being averse to meeting his father with a per- 
 sonal assertion of his own preferences, in opposition 
 to the settled plan of his family, he found himself in 
 a most difficult and unpleasant position.
 
 Under these circumstances lie adopted the only 
 course that seemed open to him, and it proved to be 
 a wise one. He addressed to his father a long and 
 dispassionate letter, opening to him his very heart ; 
 and offering for his consideration such weighty argu- 
 ments and cogent reasons why it was the most desir- 
 able thing possible for him to study a profession 
 instead of becoming a fixture upon the farm, that the 
 father at once coincided in opinion with his son ; and 
 henceforth, every facility for study which the times 
 afforded was placed within his reach. From this day 
 onward the entire current of the boy's thought was 
 deepened, broadened, strengthened and refined by a 
 definite aim in the work of his life. 
 
 The choice of a profession marks an epoch of the 
 gravest importance in the career of any young man. 
 It becomes, insensibly to himself, a point of departure 
 as well as of convergence of all the lines that enter 
 into his future history, while hidden indications of 
 native genius, warmed by the promethean fire, are 
 silently assuming form and proportions which are 
 eventually to illustrate and adorn his intelledlual life. 
 Thus it was that, in an hour, the entire course of our 
 friend's life was radically changed and intensified. 
 
 A judicious line of procedure was defined and 
 followed, and in 1824 he entered himself as a student
 
 in the Medical Department of Yale College, under 
 the instruction of such eminent men as Benjamin 
 Silliman, Nathan Smith and Eli Ives, — these three 
 gentlemen constituting, at that date, the entire 
 faculty' of medicine, by whom he was duly graduated 
 with the class of 1S27, as a Doclor in Medicine. 
 
 Dr. Bronson's first settlement as a candidate for pro- 
 fessional emplo^Tnent was in "West Springfield, ]Massa- 
 chusetts, where he acquired considerable reputation, 
 and in 183 1 married Sarah ^liles, daughter of Hon. 
 Samuel Lathrop, a wealth}^ resident of that town, a 
 law3'er and a member of Congress. Another daugh- 
 ter of ]Mr. Lathrop married Rev. William B. Sprague, 
 D.D., Yale 181 5, one of the resident clergy-men of 
 Alban}-, X. Y., and a famous preacher of the day. 
 It was probabl}- this famil\- connection that induced 
 3'oung Bronson to remove to Alban}-, where he was 
 earl}- in\-ited to become a partner with Alden Jklarch, 
 M.D., then and until his death professor of surgery 
 in the Alban}- Medical College, and the most cele- 
 brated surgeon in that portion of the State. 
 
 After his removal to Alban}^ Dr. Bronson occupied 
 his leisure hours by writing for the periodical press 
 articles upon a variet^^ of topics, more or less scien- 
 tific in their nature, but written in a manner clearl}" 
 indicating the versatility of his talents ; while ever3''
 
 produdlion of his pen attracted marked attention, and 
 was regarded by the public as an earnest of the good 
 things that might be expedled from him. 
 
 As an illustration of his style of composition and 
 method of reasoning at this early period of his career, 
 and to show how these were admired by some of the 
 best men of the profession outside of his native State, 
 I append some notices by the medical press, and 
 extracts from letters by persons unknown to him. 
 Dr. C. C. Yates, at that time an eminent physician of 
 New York, thus addresses him in October, 1832 : 
 
 " I believe that I am indebted to your politeness 
 for a philosophic essay on Medical Logic — (or as the 
 writer of the letter has it), on ' reasoning in medicine? 
 This paper I have read with much attention and 
 improvement. Indeed, sir, I confess myself much 
 interested in its perusal, and consequently I tender to 
 you my acknowledgments. If that justice were 
 rendered to your produdlion, which in my estimation 
 it deserves, it would place its author far above his 
 compeers. I admired the language and the spirit of 
 your late letters on the Cholera, although differing 
 from me in some pradlical views, but I was not pre- 
 pared to see so able a display of logical and argu- 
 mentative powers as is manifested in this essay by 
 one so young, and of necessity so inexperienced a 
 candidate for medical fame. I see in you the medical 
 philosopher, but the unpopular pra(?titioner — Startle 
 not at my predi6lion ! It is your creditable independ- 
 ence of mind, of thought, and of expression, that will
 
 probabl}^ subject 3'ou to the mortification of being 
 excelled by the mean, the sycophantic, and the ignor- 
 ant in the acquisition of patients. 
 
 Nothing but some fortunate turn of circumstances, 
 or an extensive familj^ connedlion, will enable a person 
 of your standing to cope with foil}- and licensed 
 quacker3^ Your paper has been literall}' used up. 
 I have lent it until it has become dilapidated and 
 obsairatcd. It is illecrible. I ^^-ish vou would obligre 
 me b}' information where I can procure more copies. 
 I want to send them to both England and France. 
 I received from Boston your paper on disinfecting 
 agents, and have transmitted it to the Board of 
 Health of Savannah, as part of m}- reply to a letter 
 addressed to me b}- that bod}-, asking for the best 
 information to guard against and treat the cholera 
 should it appear among them." 
 
 Our highest authorit}- in the medical journalism'-' 
 of that da}- reviewed the pamphlet in terms of high 
 commendation, and thus quoted freely from its pages : 
 
 " We have been favored b}" Dr. Henr}- Bronson, of 
 Albany, -uith a small brochure on Medical Logic, of 
 which we presume he is the author. It is an able 
 produdlion marked by sound reasoning, and is evi- 
 dently the offspring of a cultivated mind. It should 
 be as widely circulated as possible, being calculated 
 to lead the public to a juster appreciation of medical 
 
 * American "Journal of Medical Sciences," May, 1832, p. 270.
 
 science, and a more discriminating judgment of pro- 
 fessional capacity." 
 
 The following extradl will exhibit the obje(5l of the 
 writer: "The conclusion," says the dodlor, "to 
 which we would bring our remarks is this. The only 
 safety for the public on this momentous subjedl is to 
 confine the practice of physic to men of truly enlight- 
 ened and philosophic minds. But this can never be 
 accomplished until the public at large are made more 
 strongly to feel the multiplied and peculiar difficulties 
 attendant on medical inquiries. 
 
 It is from enlightened public opinion alone that we 
 can hope for the removal of what is an enormous evil 
 in this country — the intrusion (the admission) of 
 ignorant men of weak and undisciplined minds into 
 the medical profession. Public opinion ought to 
 check the facility Avith which degrees and licences to 
 pra6lice are granted in some of our medical institu- 
 tions. 
 
 How often are men taken from the plough or the 
 anvil with only the bare rudiments of an English 
 education, and in two or three years turned out upon 
 society as the constituted guardians of the public 
 health ! 
 
 Such men in most cases could not sustain them- 
 selves for an hour, either in the profession of divinity 
 or of law. Their utter incapacity for philosophical
 
 investigation would be manifest to all ; but, shielded 
 by the mysteries of a profession which the public eye 
 cannot penetrate, the}^ too gain wealth and influence 
 by the grossest quackery and imposition. If our 
 remarks in this article," he says in conclusion, " shall 
 lead any of our readers to appreciate more highly 
 the amount of mental discipline which ought to be 
 demanded in medical pradlitioners, our labors will be 
 amply repaid." 
 
 These pungent but truthful lines were written 
 more than sixty years ago, in a spirit of righteous 
 indignation over the existence of a monstrous evil 
 which, even in that early time, had begun to cast its 
 shadow over all the colleges of this country, and 
 threatened to become inherent in our entire system 
 of medical education ; nor has this danger wholly 
 ceased — nor is it confined to medical colleges alone. 
 
 The descriptive force of his language was true 
 then, and it is true to-day in numerous instances, but 
 not universally ; j^et history repeats itself so often 
 that these peculiar crimes against civilization, com- 
 mitted as they have been with impunity and without 
 causing even a blush of shame, or much less the 
 impeachment of the oflfenders, can neither be for- 
 gotten nor forgiven. 
 
 So long as politicians are able to worm themselves 
 into respedlable and honest college faculties, and to
 
 carry with tliem the political caucus system, with all 
 which that implies, such things will be repeated ; and 
 it ought not to be a matter for surprise, but for alarm, 
 if men without any medical education or training 
 have been able to purchase outright, for silver coin, 
 medical diplomas, issued as the euphonious ritual 
 still has it, ''''pro autoritate 7mhi commissa^'' by medi- 
 cal colleges claiming to be respedlable, — while recent 
 events seem to demonstrate that other colleges, less 
 scrupulous, bestow medical diplomas for consider- 
 ations that will not bear the slightest inspection — and 
 for reasons far less honorable to themselves, but more 
 injurious to the public, because they lead the public 
 mind to form a lower estimate of the honor and ability 
 of the medical profession at large than it deserves. 
 
 Dr. Bronson held for many years these opinions, 
 based upon fa6ls that had come within his own 
 knowledge ; and thus, in the earliest periods of his 
 professional life, as on all suitable occasions later, he 
 earnestly contended for the prevalence of honest 
 methods of admission to the ranks of the profession ; 
 and urged that examinations for degrees should be of 
 such a charadler, and so condudled, that a diploma in 
 medicine would pass current everywhere as a safe 
 public guarantee that its possessor had been well 
 instru6led, and was reasonably well qualified to take 
 into his hands the " care of the public health."
 
 Men die, but institutions live. 
 
 Men die, and their histories may die with them. 
 Institutions live ; their histories never die — but, good 
 or bad, the}^ live forever — imperishable. It is the 
 influence of such considerations that impart to the 
 every-day fadls of common life the power to mould 
 the institutions and the destinies of mankind. 
 
 The year 1832 was distinguished b}- the most dis- 
 astrous historical event that has characterized any of 
 the years of this centur}^, with the exception of the 
 years of our civil war ; for it was in the earl}- summer 
 of that 5'ear that our continent was first visited b}?- 
 Asiatic Cholera. 
 
 The pestilence was brought to our shores from 
 Dublin, by an emigrant ship arriving at Quebec, 
 having lost on the passage some fort\^ persons b\- the 
 disease, — the sur^avors made their wa}' to Montreal. 
 As rapidl}' as the tidings could be spread by the flee- 
 ing people, the disease itself was carried along all 
 lines of communication, until in ever}- habitation, 
 to the hovels of the poor, from the palaces of the rich, 
 the angel of death had set his seal. 
 
 At Albanj', such was the confidence felt b}- her 
 citizens in Dr. Bronson's peculiar qualifications for
 
 the investigation of abstruse questions in medical 
 science, and such was the impression he had made 
 upon that critical community, as a man of distin- 
 guished ability, that he was commissioned by several 
 prominent gentlemen, at whose head was the Mayor, 
 and dire6led to proceed to Montreal, and other points 
 in Canada infe6led with the pestilence, and availing 
 himself of every opportunity to study the natural 
 history of the disease — its modes of propagation — its 
 treatment in the North, together with its results, to 
 report to the committee also such hygienic measures 
 as he would recommend as reliable preventives. 
 
 Inspired by a profound sense of his moral obliga- 
 tions to God, and to his fellow men, he promptly 
 accepted this call to duty ; and bidding farewell to 
 his young wife, and to all he held dear, he took his 
 life in his hand, and hastened to the death-stricken 
 city, that he might gather there new knowledge of an 
 unknown and deadly pestilence, for the benefit of his 
 race. 
 
 For a good man some may even dare to die ; but to 
 hazard deliberately the extinAion of a pure and 
 invaluable life, in order that the vi(5lims of every 
 form of vice, wickedness and moral degradation may 
 live, implies the possession of attributes too seldom 
 met with, and indicates the highest possible devotion 
 to duty.
 
 Dr. Bronson's first letter from Montreal was brief, 
 merely announcing his arrival there on the twenty- 
 first of June, and giving his first impressions of the 
 actual conditions in such a crowded city, destitute of 
 sewers, and of all modern sanitary appliances, under 
 the sudden invasion of universal pestilence, and among 
 an ignorant population surrounded by circumstances 
 favorable for the rapid extension and quickly fatal 
 termination of a disease never before seen upon our 
 shores. Under the present advanced state of our 
 knowledge, and the greater familiarity of the public 
 mind with the exigencies of life, it would probably be 
 difficult for us to appreciate clearly the wild terror of 
 our entire population as they helplessly awaited the 
 approach of death, from which they saw no way of 
 escape. 
 
 But during the prevalence of the disease, and its 
 progress over our continent, the important fadl was 
 observed that, the inmates of prisons in this country 
 and in Europe, who were absolutely cut off from all 
 contact with the outside world, were entirel}'^ exempt 
 from the infedlion. 
 
 I was myself old enough to remember the fadl that 
 so fully was the condition of isolation accepted as the 
 only preventive means possible against the cholera 
 infedlion, that in many instances men of the highest 
 intelligence stood on guard over their domains, pre-
 
 pared to fire upon all intruders ; while placards and 
 watcli-dogs served as additional defences. But in 
 their own families no deviations from the accustomed 
 rules of diet, including the use of fresh fruits and 
 vegetables from their own gardens, were permitted. 
 For those who lived sensibly no change in diet or 
 regimen was advised. 
 
 The skeptical mind of our philosophic friend 
 refused to receive as fa6ls the unsupported statements 
 of the crowd of observers who pressed forward, each 
 with his bundle of fadls, offering to prove that Asiatic 
 cholera was not a contagious disease, but was only a 
 flux common in the summer months, but void of all 
 danger if checked in its early stage by some anodyne 
 astringent nostrum. But another array of real fa6ls, 
 presented by so competent an observer as Dr. Bron- 
 son, brushed away this defe6live reasoning based 
 upon false fa6ls, and brought the profession and the 
 people face to face with the all-important truth that 
 cholera was from the first moment a definite disease 
 — sui generis — and not merely a diarrhoea, which if 
 negledled might become cholera — it was communi- 
 cable — and therefore a contagious and infective dis- 
 ease that was conveyed along the lines of public 
 travel by persons and their baggage — was attended 
 by strange symptoms never before seen, and termi- 
 nated fatally and peculiarly in a few hours.
 
 I need not here go further into his statement of 
 fadls and reasoning before the Albany committee ; 
 but he early improves the opportunity to disabuse the 
 professional and public mind of the prevalent delusion 
 that the chlorides of lime and soda are in any sense 
 dismfcElants^ — though thej^ ma}^ be in some degree 
 useful in dissipating foul-smelling odors. We know, 
 however, that the}- have no effedl to mitigate the 
 dangers of disease. 
 
 I do not forget, IMr. President, that I am not 
 addressing a strictly professional audience ; nor do I 
 cease to remember with pleasure, that the people of 
 culture who are accustomed to assemble in these halls 
 are alwa3's interested in whatever pertains to scientific 
 knowledge, particularly such as relates to dicoveries 
 in medical science, or concerns our bodiU' health, or 
 the personality of those whose lives have been devoted 
 to the work of ministering to the health of others. 
 
 I may assume, therefore, that in the endeavor to 
 set before you some of the great qualities of our dis- 
 tinguished friend, neither the events of his profes- 
 sional life in their historical relations to the ph3-sical 
 welfare of the world, nor some allusions to the obscure 
 medical theories of the past, could well be omitted. 
 
 Dr. Bronson loved with all the force of his moral 
 nature the profession of his choice, and while stand- 
 ing ever ready to break a lance in its defense against
 
 the assaults of presuming ignorance, or tlie unblushing 
 chicanery of the crafty, he was ever ready to instru6l 
 the one, and enlighten or expose the other. He 
 had a remarkable insight into the hidden mysteries 
 of nature, which to many others was a sealed book, 
 and beyond their comprehension. He had also very 
 definite ideas as to the limitations of science and art 
 in the treatment and cure of diseases. He was 
 eminently successful in tracing out the hidden causes 
 of disease, and in palliating their painful or disturb- 
 ing e£fe6ls, but I should add, moreover, that he was 
 accustomed to say that he did not know that he had 
 ever cured anybody. 
 
 While he had an intelligent faith in the powers of 
 a few medicinal agents to relieve the sympathetic 
 disturbances of fun6lions, caused by organic disease 
 or other agencies, he had, in common with all the 
 other great physicians of history, little or no rational 
 faith in the power of drugs to cure disease. Freely 
 admitting that recoveries from disease occurred under 
 almost all forms of treatment in proportions some- 
 what similar, he could not, with all his candor, be an 
 advocate of any exclusive system of treatment. 
 
 It has been said of him that, on one occasion, he 
 received from a relative an urgent letter asking for 
 advice in the case of a child sick with the measles, 
 and whose case, it was feared, the attending physician
 
 did not understand, because he was giving the patient 
 a great variet}' of medicines, at short inter\-als, and 
 the child was becoming rapidly worse. Without stop- 
 ping to discuss the merits of this or that path}-, for 
 which he cared nothing, he took a large sheet of paper 
 and wrote in the middle of the great page this pre- 
 scription : 
 
 Take a white china cup 
 
 with nothing in it ; 
 
 Turn the handle toward the 
 
 north-west, and give a 
 
 teaspoonful every hour. 
 
 The little patient will soon be well. 
 
 This was a plain illustration of a great truth con- 
 tained in the aphorism seldom heard in those daj's, 
 that '' the viajority of diseases are self-liinited — they 
 come and tarry ^ and disappear according to natural 
 law — if nobody interferes^ 
 
 Let us pause for a moment, and ask ourselves the 
 question, what would be the condition of the human 
 race to-da}-, if the rise and progress of diseases were 
 not regulated by laii\ and what would doubtless happen 
 to the world if ever}- man were to become a law unto 
 himself, and could, at will, turn the dial backward for 
 two or three thousand j-ears — before medical science 
 was bom — to the time when ignorance and tradition 
 were almost the onl}- guides ? I xtxy well remember
 
 tlie dawning of the brilliant light which followed that 
 dark age, when men, entirely ignorant of the uni- 
 versal law that the majority of diseases are self-limited^ 
 persisted year after year, for successive generations, 
 in their willful, because unthinking blindness, in 
 compelling the defenceless sick to swallow a great 
 variety of nauseous drugs, too often fatal in them- 
 selves, while they scrupulously denied to their 
 patients the use of nature's great remedies, a cup of 
 cold water and a morsel of bread. It would be inter- 
 esting to describe to you, did the occasion permit, an 
 hour's debate in which Dr. Bronson held the fixed 
 attention of his audience, in his discussion of the 
 question, " What have been the operation and the 
 controlling influences of natural law in the history 
 and development of the human race?" 
 
 During his remarks he spoke solemnly of the 
 responsibility of those men, weak, well-meaning, but 
 industriously ignorant, who closed their minds to the 
 truths of scientific observation, and refused to wel- 
 come the light that was pervading the world. But 
 the question reaches a magnitude and importance 
 entirely too great for this occasion, though it affords 
 us a glimpse of the natural scope and grasp of his 
 cultivated mind. 
 
 The Albany letters of Dr. Bronson, of which I now 
 present you with the first one of the series of six, were
 
 immediately given to the press, and were copied by all 
 newspapers on this continent and in foreign lands.* 
 They constituted the earliest and most complete dis- 
 sertation on the nature and treatment of Asiatic 
 cholera then in existence, and written as it were at 
 the bedside, the}^ furnished a graphic account of the 
 unchecked march of the pestilence across the conti- 
 nent, studied and recorded under the careful observa- 
 tion of a most competent investigator. His views of 
 the pathology and proper treatment of cholera were 
 ever3^where approved and adopted ; and they gave 
 direction to medical pra6lice throughout the world, 
 until in after years they were modified by the great 
 advances made in therapeutic knowledge. 
 
 Unconsciously to himself, as I believe, the second- 
 ary, but more transient effedl: of these letters was to 
 cause the name of Henry Bronson to become famil- 
 iarly known to medical men, wherever the pestilence 
 gathered its vidlims ; and if these events had occurred 
 in the present generation, and if he had so chosen, he 
 certainly would have received, as he would have 
 merited, the highest civic and professional honors that 
 could properly have been conferred upon him. 
 
 *In the year 1833, Dr. Martyn Paine of New York published a History 
 of Cholera at Montreal, made up of replies to catechetical questions he had 
 asked of Dr. Holmes of Montreal, with regard to certain points which he 
 evidently desired should correspond to certain previously formed opinions.
 
 Montreal^ Jmie 21, 12, M., 1832. 
 
 I have now only time to say that I arrived here this morn- 
 ing. Such a scene of desolation as this city exhibits, I never 
 witnessed. Business is entirely suspended ; the stores are 
 closed, and the streets deserted. Although this is a holiday 
 with the Catholics, scarcely a human face is to be seen abroad. 
 
 The mortality in Montreal by the present disease is unexam- 
 pled even in the history of the Epidemic Cholera. The num- 
 ber of cases oflEicially reported is about 3,000, and the number 
 of deaths about 800. Many of the physicians, owing to 
 sickness, did not report at all on some of the most fatal days. 
 Besides, a great many have died whom no physician ever saw. 
 
 The disease is now evidently on the decline. But few new 
 cases have occurred within the last 12 hours. However 
 within the last 48 hours a much greater proportion of the 
 attacked than before has been the higher orders, and those of 
 temperate and regular habits. Some very valuable lives were 
 lost last night. The disease still prevails to a considerable 
 extent in lyaprairie, and is extending rapidly into the country 
 to the south. 
 
 I am now about to visit the emigrant's hospital, where 
 numbers lie ill of the worst forms of the epidemic. 
 
 [first letter.] 
 Montreal, Friday, 22d June, 12 0' cVk M. 
 
 Gentlemen — It is with pleasure that I can state to you, 
 that the cholera is rapidly abating here. Some of the princi- 
 pal physicians have told me this morning that they had not 
 met with a new case to-day. The cases which now occur are 
 many of them anomalous, assuming the appearance of con- 
 tinued typhus fever. The countenances of the people begin 
 to look cheerful. 
 
 During the prevalence of all epidemic diseases, within the 
 limits to which they extend, there is a predisposition, occasioned 
 by the operation of some common causes, to the prevailing dis- 
 order. This predisposition may be stronger or weaker, but it
 
 is so strong in all cases, that injurious causes, which were before 
 successfull}- resisted, are attended with \nolent or fatal eflfecls, 
 kindling into a blaze the latent seeds of disease. This state is 
 not incompatible with perfect health, though it is commonly 
 manifested, particularly in the more malignant epidemics, by 
 some very unequivocal symptoms. It has been remarked, 
 whenever cholera has appeared on both continents, that the 
 whole population within the sphere of its range, have expe- 
 rienced some of the s>*mptoms which are usually premonitory 
 of its attack, such as griping pains or oppression at the 
 stomach, depraved digestion, etc. This I have noticed in all 
 the regions where cholera has prevailed, from Whitehall to 
 this place. 1 have supposed these sensations to be independ- 
 ent of anxiety or fear, because I have found them where they 
 could not have been supposed to exist. It is these symptoms 
 which indicate the predisposition to cholera, and which assume 
 the decided character of disease, bj^ the operation of the slight- 
 est causes, but which may continue without manifesting such 
 a character if all hurtful agents are carefulh* avoided. In this 
 condition of the body there is required the most delicate man- 
 agement — a strict regard to a thousand trifling circumstances 
 which at other times would require no attention. The system 
 is in the condition of a delicate balance, the equilibrium of 
 which is disturbed by the weight of a feather. 
 
 The causes which have a tendency to disturb this health}* bal- 
 ance, are called by phj'sicians the existiyig causes of diseases. 
 They are as numerous as the agents which are capable of acting 
 on the human s\-stem, and are such as food and drink, motion 
 and rest, heat and cold, sleeping and waking, emotions of the 
 mind, etc. On a careful attention to these, ever^-thing hinges 
 during the prevalence of a mortal epidemic. 
 
 The Montreal physicians saw their importance, and very 
 judiciously insisted on their strict regulation. Those here, 
 who have escaped the maladj-, probabh- owe it to the com- 
 mand they exercised over the exciting causes. Excess of 
 every description has been followed by almost certain death. 
 The least irregularity in diet or drink, whether in quality- or 
 
 26
 
 quantity, too severe or protradled exercise, bodily or mental, 
 or exposure to a hot sun, etc., have rarely been unattended with 
 injurious or fatal consequences. Those who have presumed on 
 the vigor of their constitution, or yielded in the shghtest to an 
 unhallowed appetite, have generally paid the forfeit of their 
 lives. On the contrary, those whose constitution had not been 
 previously impaired by intemperance of any species, whose hab- 
 its during the epidemic, were sober and regular, whose bodies 
 were not debilitated by too protradted exertion, whose minds 
 were undisturbed by apprehension, escaped almost to a man. 
 
 Cholera has stood up here, as it has done everywhere, the 
 advocate of temperance. It has pleaded most eloquently, and 
 with tremendous eflfedl. The disease has searched out the 
 haunt of the drunkard, and has seldom left it without bearing 
 away its victim. Bven moderate drinkers have been but a lit- 
 tle better off. Ardent spirits, in any shape and in all quanti- 
 ties, have been highly detrimental. Some temperate men 
 resorted to it during the prevalence of the malady, as a pre- 
 ventive, or to remove the feeling of uneasiness about the 
 stomach, or for the purpose of drowning their apprehensions, 
 but they did it at their peril. It is believed never to have 
 done good, but nearly always injury. The slight indigestion 
 which was so common, was best relieved by regulating the 
 kind and quantity of food, and by great moderation in the use 
 of the ordinary drinks. 
 
 The disastrous effecfts of that tampering with medicines which 
 is so prevalent during the ravages of an epidemic, were here 
 witnessed on an extensive scale. This evil was of such serious 
 magnitude, that an injundlion was laid on apothecaries not to 
 sell drugs except on the order of a physician. It was a com- 
 mon thing in the commencement of the sickness, for persons in 
 health to take vomits, purges, etc., as preventives. The con- 
 sequences were often fatal. It was truly considered that a man 
 who is well can not be made better by medicine ; but on the 
 contrary, is sure to receive detriment. In almost every in- 
 stance where severe medicines were taken for the symptoms of 
 predisposition, an attack followed. The system was thus,
 
 as it were, thrown off its balance, and of course put into the 
 very situation in which it is most susceptible to an attack. 
 Let the wares of the apothecan- be reserved for the hour of 
 decided sickness. Then, if adapted to the case, they cannot 
 be too promptly used. 
 
 Those emotions which agitate deepl)- and durably the mind, 
 have at all times a very prejudicial effedl upon the health ; but 
 when there is a strong predisposition to disease, and during 
 the raging of a sweeping epidemic, they are productive of the 
 worst consequences. That fearful pestilence which is now 
 passing over Montreal, has produced a degree of agitation in 
 the minds of the people, which has probably never been felt 
 before. The stoutest hearts were unable to resist, but were 
 overwhelmed in the torrent. Numerous cases of sickness and 
 manj- deaths, were the consequence of this high state of excite- 
 ment. It is impossible to tell in how many instances a predis- 
 position which might never have resulted in anj- thing serious, 
 has been kindled into a blaze from causes purely mental ; but 
 doubtless, this has been the fact in a vast number. It has often 
 been said of cholera, that as manj- die of fear as of the disease. 
 Though this ma}- not be literally true, j'et it may be truly 
 said that hundreds die of cholera excited bj^ fear. Its operation 
 is sometimes tJidirecl, heightening susceptibility, and laj-ing 
 the grounds of a strong predisposition, or dij-e^i acling upon a 
 previous predisposition, and proving the immediate cause of an 
 attack of the reigning maladj*. 
 
 Should the cholera ever reach Albanj-, means to calm the 
 passions, and to produce equanimit}' of mind and fortitude, 
 cannot be too faithfulh' used. The public should be prepared 
 for an attack, so that when the enemy comes, thej- need not be 
 taken hy surprise. A panic is of all things to be deprecated. 
 
 Yesterday p. m. the board of health reported 84 deaths from 
 cholera for the 24 hours preceding. 
 
 P. S. Drs. Rhinelander and DeKaj'-, from New York City, 
 arrived this day. 
 
 With great respedl, I remain, gentlemen, j-ours, etc., 
 
 Henry Bronson.
 
 [second letter.] 
 
 Montreal, June 2j, i8j2. 
 
 My Dear Sir — The cholera is rapidly subsiding here. 
 Yesterday there were reported 37 burials from cholera. The 
 disease, we hear, is extending in all diredlions. 
 
 The authorities of Albany cannot be too prompt and too 
 vigilant in the purification of the city, in way of preparation 
 for cholera, and though the extensiveness and fatality to the dis- 
 ease are not necessarily in exacft proportion to the amount of 
 public and private filth, it is still proved, from a field of obser- 
 vation as wide as the world, that its diffusion is promoted, and 
 its mortality increased by uncleanliness, of whatever descrip- 
 tion. Its generally limited spread in the south of Europe, and 
 particularly in Britain, has been attributed in a great measure 
 (and not without some reason,) to the care and vigilance which 
 was observed in preparing for its reception by removing every 
 source of corruption. Montreal is at the present time in a 
 peculiarly favorable situation for the reception and propagation 
 of cholera, if the accumulation of masses of putrifying materials 
 are indicative of such a situation. IvCt neighboring cities read 
 an example from her melancholy fate, of the danger of negledt- 
 ing purity. 
 
 All decomposing animal and vegetable relics should be re- 
 moved without the bounds of the city. They should be removed 
 if possible. Nothing short of this will with any certainty effecft 
 the desired objecft. Covering up is calculated to conceal, not to 
 destroy. I have no hesitation in saying that quick-lime and 
 the chlorides should never be trusted to when removal is prac- 
 ticable. It strikes me that the confidence put in them is dan- 
 gerous, and calculated to divert the mind from the true and 
 only effedlual mode of purifying. I dare not say that their 
 use can never be of any service, but I risk nothing in afl&rming 
 that they are not substitutes for real cleanliness. I well know 
 that the chlorides, in which most confidence seems to be placed, 
 destroy chemically the fetid gases, but I also know that
 
 decomposing animal and vegetable matter gives out an agent 
 or agents of the most deleterious nature independent of those 
 gases, and sometimes unaccompanied bj' them. This facl is 
 well known among medical men. As for the chlorides destroj-- 
 ing the principle of contagion or infeclion, there is no proof of 
 it. Besides, the principle of contagion is not an elementary or 
 a compounded gas such as chemists are accustomed to catch in 
 their receivers. It is not sulphuretted hydrogen, nor carbu- 
 retted hydrogen, nor phosphoretted hydrogen, which chlorine 
 is calculated to decompose, but a specific animal secretion, sui 
 generis. All which is said in respect to the chlorides is said 
 with a reference to the present e\*idence in their favor. They 
 have been used here during the prevalence of the present epi- 
 demic to a consideral extent, but without any known good 
 effec~t. The Montreal phj-sicians, as far as I know, put no 
 confidence in them. 
 
 Of the efiicacy of free ventilation as a means of cleanliness I 
 need say nothing. As a preventive to the introducftion and 
 spread of epidemic and contagious diseases, and of cholera in 
 particular, and as possessed of a modifying influence upon their 
 characler, it deserves intent consideration. 
 
 I take it for granted that there will be provided in Albany, 
 in anticipation, comfortable and commodious receptacles for 
 the sick poor. When the cholera broke out in Montreal, 
 nothing was provided in this way, nor indeed for many days 
 afterwards. For the want of a hospital patients were carried 
 into the open field, and left to die uncovered. At last some 
 sheds of rough boards were erected without flooring, with holes 
 sawed in the ends for doors, and in the sides for windows. 
 Some straw was laid upon the groimd and the sick placed 
 upon it, when of course they soon saw the end of their misery. 
 It afforded little proteclion from the rain. Such \\Tetched 
 hovels for the reception of those ill of so severe a disease as 
 cholera, requiring for its cure assiduous attention and all those 
 favorable circtunstances which the best regulated and pro\-ided 
 hospitals can afford, were little better than nothing. Almost 
 all died who were carried to them.
 
 During the height of the epidemic here many of the physi- 
 cians were unable to attend to one-half of their calls. They 
 could often do no more than hear a brief statement of the case 
 from a messenger and send the medicine. Frequently they 
 could not do even this. That none need be entirely deprived 
 of the means of relief, depots of medicines were established in 
 various parts of the city, designated by a yellow flag, and 
 placed under the care of a medical student or some trusty per- 
 sons where those in the neighborhood might resort for reme- 
 dies. It is true, medicine could be used with little certainty 
 or success under these circumstances, but perhaps the best 
 alternative was adopted. 
 
 No ef&cient measures seem to have been taken here by the 
 authorities or citizens at the onset of the disease, and after it 
 had begun to carry off its scores per day, there was such an 
 universal agitation of mind and paralysis of all the faculties, 
 that nobody was able to adt with decision and judgment. In 
 this state of consternation it could not be expedted that amends 
 were to be made for previous negle(5t and inefl&ciency. Every- 
 thing that was done appears to have been done with a tremu- 
 lous hand and with a wavering purpose, plainly indicating the 
 doubt, hesitation and terror which ruled within. Where there 
 seemed to be aclion, there was in truth only bustle. Courage 
 was only recklessness. Firmness was but the stupefadtion of 
 fear. Every man, looking at his present hour as among his 
 last, was intent only on his own safety. The welfare of his 
 neighbor was a foreign concern. While in this state of anxiety 
 to secure his own life, he was in the very condition in which 
 he was most likely to lose it. 
 
 I shall hereafter speak of the nature, origin, mode of propa- 
 gation, and treatment of cholera in the places I have visited. 
 I will only now say, that from what I have seen, I am per- 
 suaded that the disease is often spread by intercourse or conta- 
 gion from one place to another. Though I have no doubt that 
 it may originate spontaneously, and often does so, at the same 
 time it seems sometimes to be carried from one place to 
 another.
 
 [third letter.] 
 
 Montreal, June 2j. 
 
 I feel disposed to put much stress upon what was said j'es- 
 terday respecting the chlorides, more particularly as I find 
 they are likeh- to be extensiveh* used and confided in. This 
 confidence I conceive to be misplaced and imminently danger- 
 ous. I have heretofore examined this subject with some care, 
 and can find ven,- little testimony in their favor ; certainly 
 none which can entitle them to consideration, when we have 
 at our command the more effectual means of cleanliness, such 
 as the removal of the offending cause, ventilation, the free use 
 of pure water, draining, &c. I have enquired again of some 
 of the most intelligent physicians of Montreal, the result of 
 their obsen'ations on the use of these supposed disinfecting 
 agents during the present epidemic, but can find nothing cal- 
 culated to satisfy the minds of those who advocate their utility. 
 Professional opinion is decidedly against them here. Some 
 have supposed that they have actually predisposed the body to 
 an attack of the disease, by their irritating and noxious agency 
 upon the sj-stem. This is ver^- probable from the known effecl 
 of chlorine upon the animal powers. Though it ma}- not be 
 respired except in minute quantities, y&t it should be recol- 
 lected that during the prevalence of cholera, there is such an 
 exquisite susceptibilitj' to the action of all agents, (the consti- 
 tution giving wa}' to the current disease by the application of 
 the slightest causes) that an atmosphere containing only a 
 minute portion of the agent so obnoxious to health as this, 
 may nevertheless prove detrimental. It maj- prove th.& feather 
 which turns the scale against a man who is laboring under a 
 strong predisposition. I hope these remarks will not be set 
 down to the account of prejudice or superficial examination, 
 though they ma\- be founded in error. Whatever be their just- 
 ness or value, they have been the result of considerable reflec- 
 tion and inquir}-. I shall cheerfally ascribe disinfecting pow- 
 ers to chlorine, as soon as a sufficient ntmiber oi facts have 
 been brought forward to establish so important a point ; not
 
 before. Its use is at present empirical ; not founded in science, 
 nor the result of dedudlion from observation. When confided 
 in, it is productive of hazard from the neglect of true purifica- 
 tion which it induces. If an ounce or two of chloride of lime 
 is supposed adequate to render any quantity of filth innoxious, 
 man, moved by the ordinary labor-saving motives, is easily 
 persuaded to trust to it, and to disregard the only effedlual but 
 more laborious process of removing the offending substance. 
 
 Fires were kindled and cannon and musketry discharged here 
 during the height of the epidemic, to disinfedt, as it was said, 
 the atmosphere. These means have been often used for the 
 same purpose during the raging of pestilence, but with no 
 known advantage. Tar and sulphur were burned with the 
 same design, and with a similar effect. Camphor was a favor- 
 ite article with the timid ; that is to say, with a great part of 
 the community. It was put into a bag and worn round the 
 neck ; it was carried in the pocket ; it was sprinkled in the 
 handkerchief. If two passed each other in the street, the nose 
 was diligently plied with the camphor bag by the respective 
 parties. Every straggling beggar or unfortunate emigrant was 
 supposed to personify the cholera, and if dire necessity ren- 
 dered it necessary to approach him, the camphor bag was an 
 indispensable companion. It would have been well had these 
 "preventives" been attended with only negative effedls. 
 It is the opinion of some of the physicians that they were 
 sometimes positively injurious. Some of them exhale noxious 
 fumes, which when respired act injuriously upon the system. 
 The effluvium of camphor is powerful and penetrating, which 
 cannot but do harm when constantly in contadl with the sensi- 
 ble olfactories. The same obje(5tion may be made to all those 
 substances which give out strong and disagreeable odor, which 
 was made to the chlorides, with respect to their eflfedls on pre- 
 disposition. 
 
 I have before alluded to the too frequent and indiscriminate 
 use of medicine as a preventive in cholera. This was carried 
 to a most absurd and dangerous extreme in Montreal. Every 
 man had his phial, or his pill box, or his powders of different
 
 kinds, in his pockets. Literally, he carried about with him 
 an apothecaries shop. Whenever he perceived a bad odor, or 
 felt a disagreeable sensation at the stomach, or imagined he 
 did so, he suddenly stopped, felt his pulse, pulled out his med- 
 icine, swallowed a dose, smelt his camphor, felt his pulse again 
 and hastened on. The sight of medicine and the act of tak- 
 ing it, operating on the common principle of association, 
 brought Cholera up before the diseased imagination with 
 increased vi^ndness. This mental impression, reacling again 
 upon the body, magnified the difficulty, and gave a new 
 demand for the anti-choleric medicine. 
 
 It is believed that apothecaries did an immense deal of injury 
 by advertising and recommending their nostrums as preven- 
 tives of cholera and as specific in its cure. A hundred differ- 
 ent preparations, some of them inert, some of them powerful, 
 were in this way distributed among the community, with 
 directions recommending them to be taken once in so many 
 hours, as a preventive or as a cure of the disease. Editors, 
 too, scraped together and published all the recipes which could 
 be had. Indi\-iduals volunteered their ad\'ice and stated their 
 experience. Thus the public mind was distradted and almost 
 enraged. Xo one could tell, among the multiplicity of the 
 means of safety which were about him, where to put his reli- 
 ance. Alternately moved by hope and bj- fear, by faith and 
 doubt, by confidence and distrust, he at times seized upon this 
 thing and at times upon that. Some, that they might be sure to 
 get hold of the real specific, with more sang froid than was 
 common, diH gently gathered up all the anti-cholera compounds 
 which they could find, and used the whole as directed, either 
 together or in succession. 
 
 I am not opposed to the using of medicine without profes- 
 sional ad\*ice in cases of sudden attack when a physician is not 
 at hand ; on the contrary-, I am much in favor of it, pro\-ided 
 it be judicious and its design be understood. But certainly, 
 matters should not be transacted as they have been in Mon- 
 treal. The dreadful consequences which are supposed to have 
 resulted from the mode in which drugs have been distributed
 
 and taken, and ill-judged advice diffused and received, should 
 prompt other cities to the adoption of some means to prevent a 
 repetition of the like evils. 
 
 [fourth letter.] 
 
 Albany, June joth, i8j2. 
 
 Genti^emen — It is with great pleasure that I have complied 
 with your request and have drawn up the accompanying com- 
 munication, giving the results of my enquiries and observ^ations 
 while executing your purpose in my late visit to Montreal and 
 the other seats of the cholera. Though the facts which it con- 
 tains have been arranged and committed to paper with consid- 
 erable haste, they were collected with much care. 
 
 With sentiments of the highest respect and esteem, I remain 
 yours, &c. Henry Bronson. 
 
 It seems the present cholera of the north first made its 
 appearance on any considerable scale at Quebec. The fadts as 
 far as I can coUedt them are these : 
 
 The steamboat Voyageur started from Quebec to Montreal, 
 heavily loaded with passengers (emigrants), all of them appar- 
 ently healthy. They were a motley group from almost every 
 nation in Europe. After having proceeded about ten miles, 
 the boat was found to be in danger of sinking from the weight 
 of its burden. The water had actually began to enter the 
 cabin. A general alarm seized all on board, while shrieks 
 and groans were heard from every part of the vessel. The cap- 
 tain turned about and made for Quebec. He arrived between 
 12 and I o'clock on the morning of the 8th, landed about 150 
 of the emigrants, and directed his , course again up the river 
 for Montreal. On the same day a man among those who were 
 put ashore at Quebec, sickened and died of cholera. The dis- 
 ease immediately became general at that place. 
 
 During the passage to Montreal, a man was taken ill on 
 board with the symptoms of cholera, and was taken on shore 
 on the arrival of the boat at that place on the evening of the 
 9th. The next day, another emigrant, who came up in the
 
 Voyageur the evening previous, was attacked in Montreal with 
 the same disease, which proved fatal in a few hours. This 
 was the first case which occurred in Montreal. The succeed- 
 ing night and the next daj-, the disorder appeared almost simul- 
 taneously in all quarters of the city. These fadls I derived 
 from Capt. Morin, who commanded the Voj'ageur. They 
 were confirmed b}' physicians in Montreal who had examined 
 into the subject. 
 
 It may be necessar}^ to say that the vessel, James Carricks, 
 which was said to have introduced the cholera into Quebec, 
 was performing quarantine below at the time above mentioned, 
 and for some days afterwards. 
 
 During Sunday the loth, many emigrants who came up in 
 the Voj^ageur the evening preceding, crossed over to Laprairie, 
 a distance of nine miles, on their way to "the States." On 
 Mondaj' one of them was taken ill, and died of cholera. The 
 same day, but subsequently, an inhabitant who was much 
 about the landing place, was seized in a similar way. The 
 next cases occurred on Wednesdaj^ at which time the disease 
 became general. These fadts were stated to me bj^ Dr. Alex- 
 ander, of Laprairie. 
 
 On the 14th an emigrant from Montreal was found sick upon 
 the wharf in St. Johns, and died of cholera. An inhabitant 
 was attacked on the 15th, and another the daj^ following. 
 The malad}^ then spread over the village. This statement was 
 made b}^ Drs. Wamslej'- and Bucklej^ physicians in St. Johns. 
 
 The first case of sickness in Plattsburgh, which was reported 
 as cholera (though it seems doubtful from the symptoms 
 whether it was a case of that kind), was upon the 12th, in an 
 emigrant who, if his own story be correct (for he is still living), 
 left Montreal on the 7th, two days before the epidemic had 
 appeared in that place. The second case occurred on the 14th 
 and the third on the 15th, both of which were fatal. The 
 others were in immediate succession. My authorities are Drs. 
 Mooers and Kane of Plattsburgh. 
 
 On Wednesdaj' the 13th, a family came from Montreal to 
 Burlington. A child belonging to it sickened and died sud- 
 
 36
 
 denly on the 15th. The mother went to Montpelier two days 
 after, was seized with the cholera, and died, as reported by the 
 board of health in that place. On the i6th, a man who lived 
 in the building, or the group of buildings in which the family 
 from Montreal had stopped, and in which the child had died, 
 was found ill in the street of a disease resembling cholera. 
 He survived forty-eight hours. The following day (17th), two 
 others were attacked with similar symptoms, and expired in a 
 few hours. The above four cases, which occurred in Burling- 
 ton, it is now universally believed were true cholera, though 
 for reasons which it is at present unnecessary to state, they 
 were not so reported at the time. This information I received 
 from Dr. lyincoln of Burlington, a gentleman worthy of all 
 credence. 
 
 The facts in regard to the cases in Whitehall are perhaps 
 well known. A Mr. lycarned, direct from Montreal, arrived 
 at Whitehall on board the Phenix on the 15th, sick of cholera. 
 He expired in a few hours. An inhabitant was taken with 
 sjmiptoms of the same kind the next morning and died during 
 the day. Though the latter is believed to have had no imme- 
 diate communication with Learned, yet he is said to have had 
 intercourse, and drank with those who came in the same boat. 
 
 The cholera, so far as I have seen or heard, appears in par- 
 ticular families, neighborhoods and streets. The cases are to 
 be found in groups, more than single and isolated. And all 
 this seems to happen, independently of local circumstances, or 
 domestic and personal causes. This, for evident reasons, 
 appears to be more obviously the fact in the country where the 
 population is scattered, than in the citj^ where it is dense. I 
 noticed it particularly in I^aprairie. In Plattsburgh, the whole 
 number of undoubted cases, amounting to six, occurred in 
 a little cluster of dirty huts. The same was the fadl in Bur- 
 lington. In Montreal, Dr. Robinson, a highly respecftable 
 physician, informed me that the houses in which cholera raged, 
 were in groups, and that the families into which the disease 
 had once entered, were almost sure to suffer in more than one 
 instance.
 
 The cholera in America, as iu the east, in passing on has 
 taken the great roads of communication. Arriving at Mon- 
 treal from Quebec, it selected the two principal, and indeed 
 only, thoroughfares across the country. It had marched up 
 the St. Lawrence through Prescott, Brockville, Kingston, tak- 
 ing the great chain of lakes, and south through Laprairie, 
 St. Johns, Plattsburgh, &c., the only direct route to the 
 United States. It has not appeared, so far as I can learn, in 
 any inland or isolated place, except in the persons of those 
 dire<5tly from the infecn:ed region. 
 
 The fadls above noticed are precisel}'^ like those which may 
 be gathered from every field which cholera has occupied. I 
 state them because the}' are new individuall}-, not novel in 
 kind. They certainly give evidence that cholera is contagious 
 or infe(5lious (for these terms are in a practical sense synony- 
 mous). I am full)- aware of the mode in which they will be 
 evaded, not met, by the sceptical, but I have no time now to 
 spend in quibbling. But there is another class of fadls, which 
 have an important bearing upon this subjedl, which it may be 
 worth while to consider. 
 
 On the first appearance of cholera in Asia there was of course 
 no contagion. A combination of causes was then in existence 
 which originated the disease. It ceases spontaneously in the 
 southern latitudes every fall, and starts up again in the spring. 
 Why maj" not the same circumstances which primarily pro- 
 duced it, and have secondarily'- reproduced it, bring it into exist- 
 ence again in Europe or America ? Thej^ have done so. 
 
 I have the authority of Drs. Robinson and Nelson of Mon- 
 treal, men of high professional standing, for saying that the 
 cholera appeared there earl}^ in the spring of the present year, 
 before the breaking up of the ice in the river, and of course 
 before the arrival of emigrants. One of them believed it at 
 the time true Asiatic cholera, and expected to see it spread, 
 but it disappeared in about eight days. They are both of them 
 now strong in the belief of its identity with their late epi- 
 demic. Dr. Robinson saw three cases. Dr. Nelson many more. 
 A number died. The disease was confined to a small neigh- 
 
 38
 
 borhood in one of the suburbs. Dr. Wamsley of St. Johns 
 informed me thas he was called to see a man as early as last 
 April, ill of what he then supposed and now believes to have 
 been genuine Asiatic cholera. 
 
 Besides, is it possible to suppose that the emigrants who 
 spread the disease in Canada brought it with them from 
 Europe ? The latent period of this disease is known to be 
 very short. It is commonly only a few hours, rarely a few 
 days. It is hardly possible to conceive a man to take cholera 
 in Cork or Belfast, cross the Atlantic in perfedl health, reach 
 Quebec or Montreal, and there sicken for the first time. It is 
 more probable that the disease was produced by what Syden- 
 ham calls the epidemic constitution (or that unknown combina- 
 tion of circumstances which originates contagious diseases on 
 their first appearance, and frequently reproduces them after- 
 wards), which we know was intense by the few cases of cholera 
 which sprung up in the spring in Montreal and St. Johns. 
 The strong terror which prevailed among the passengers of 
 the Voyageur during their perilous situation, doubtless coop- 
 erated powerfully in producing the efledt. 
 
 The two great classes of fadts above alluded to are not at all 
 inconsistent. The dodlrines of contagion and non-contagion 
 are easily reconciled. The truth is, almost any febrile disease 
 which becomes epidemic may be contagious under particular 
 circumstances. Typhus is so — dysentery is so — yellow fever 
 and plague are so. Kvery contagious fever may also, when 
 the epidemic constitution is in a state of great intensity, or 
 the predisposition is very strong, start up without any com- 
 munication with the infe<ft;ed. This might be proved abun- 
 dantly (were there room for it) of scarlet fever, measles, 
 whooping cough, and even small pox. 
 
 There may be expedled from me a brief outline of the 
 symptoms of the disease which I have examined. 
 
 A great susceptibility to cholera is common to all who live 
 within the range of its prevalence. It is manifested, as said 
 in a previous communication, by a diminution of appetite, 
 furred tongue, indigestion, oppression about the stomach and
 
 heart, a dingA' complexion, etc. If the predisposition is 
 stronger, in addition to these symptoms are griping pains in 
 the abdomen, looseness of the bowels, slight cramps in the 
 calves of the legs, pointed features, etc. There is some 
 variety in the manner of the decided attack. The more 
 regular cases come on with vertigo, followed b}- a temporarj^ 
 loss of consciousness, some pain in the stomach and bowels, 
 distress about the chest, a sort of struggling in the region of 
 the heart, agitation and perhaps a little fullness of the pulse, 
 etc. ' This is called by the IMontreal physicians the stage of 
 excitement ; though it might perhaps with more propriety be 
 called the stage of commotion. It lasts commonly ten, twentj- 
 or thirty- minutes, or longer. Gradually, spasms in the legs 
 and about the stomach come on, copious dejeclions, at first of 
 the undigested contents of the stomach and bowels, afterwards 
 of a fluid resembling dish-water or rice-water, vomiting of a 
 similar fluid, insatiable thirst, sinking of the pulse, coldness 
 of the hands and feet, gradually extending to the trunk, blue- 
 ness of the surface. The tongue and breath are cold. A 
 profuse, cold, clammy sweat breaks out, particularly on the 
 extremities. The arteries cease to beat and the heart only 
 vibrates. The hands and feet are much shrivelled, appearing 
 as if they had for a long time been soaked in water, or envel- 
 oped in a poultice. The cheeks appear fallen in, the eyes 
 sunken, and the countenance inexpressibh* ghastly. Death 
 follows soon. The urine is commonly completely suppressed. 
 The mind seems generally little afiecled until it is deprived of 
 its means of expression bj' exhaustion. The duration of the 
 disease is ordinarih- from four to eighteen hours. 
 
 Sometimes the first stage seems to be passed over, and the 
 second, or blue, or cold stage commences the attack. This is 
 the disease in one of its worst forms. There is sometimes no 
 purging or vomiting or spasms. These are desperate cases, as 
 they show a great want of vital energy-. The insidious cases 
 are nearly equally bad. which creep on insensibly, by a pro- 
 tradled, exhausting, and unmanageable diarrhoea.
 
 The Montreal physicians confidently afiirm, that they can cure 
 five in six of the cases of cholera, provided they are called at 
 the outset of the disease, and the constitution is not in a state 
 of complete dilapidation. At this time the sweating regimen 
 is often successful. A Dover's powder may be given, the body 
 covered up warm in bed, bottles of hot water applied to the 
 feet, etc. This is the stage in which they bleed, if ever. The 
 physicians in St. Johns think they have used the lancet very 
 successfully at this period 
 
 When the vomiting, and purging, and coldness, and flagging 
 of the pulse come on, the remedies must be promptly changed. 
 Bleeding, vomiting, purging, sweating, and any reducing 
 agent, all agree, are out of place. Opium, in some combina- 
 tion or form, is here the sheet anchor. All use it, and all rely 
 on it, more than on any thing and every thing else. How- 
 ever, it requires to be managed with great judgment. The 
 pill, swallowed dry, is commonly preferred. L/audanum 
 enemas are used with advantage. Every thing depends upon 
 promptly arresting the vomiting and purging, and allaying 
 the irritability of the stomach and bowels, and consequently 
 bringing about a gentle readlion — indicated by returning 
 warmth and pulse, etc. For the latter purpose are employed 
 ammonia, ether, the essential oils, hot water blisters, dry heat 
 to the extremities, etc. A position upon the back, perfedl 
 quiet, and abstinence from all drinks, are stricftly enjoined. 
 If the patient is once raised from the sinking stage, the pros- 
 pedl of recovery is fair, and convalescence rapid. 
 
 This is, IN ge;nerai,, the practice I have witnessed, modified 
 of course to suit individual cases. 
 
 Some use calomel in their practice ; but it is generally con- 
 sidered too slow in its operation to prove serviceable. Some 
 employ assafsetida, and some other things ; but they are all 
 commonly auxiliary to the remedies which have been pointed 
 out. 
 
 Most of the physicians at the north, whom I have seen, 
 consider their cholera as identical with the scourge of the 
 Bast ; however, many of them look upon it as the common
 
 endemic of the country — cholera morbus in an aggravated 
 form. I know of no solid ground for this opinion. These 
 diseases appear to me as specifically distinct as different dis- 
 eases ever are. The one is epidemic, the other is never so ; 
 the one occurs at all seasons, the other never except in the 
 summer and autumn, unless in a single isolated case, depend- 
 ing upon some irritating substance taken into the stomach ; 
 the danger in the one is not necessarily proportionate to the 
 \nolence of the vomiting and purging, for some of the worst 
 cases, as we have seen, are attended with neither ; while that 
 in the other is in diredl proportion to the intensity of these 
 sj-mptoms. The peculiar rice-water discharges are almost 
 alwaj'S present in the one, and ver^- rarely in the other. 
 There are many other points of difference which cannot now 
 be enumerated. It is, however, a question which involves no 
 pracftical consideration. 
 
 I had almost forgotten to remark, what has been observed in 
 the East, that the greatest proportion of attacks from cholera, 
 so far as I have learnt, has been in the morning, between the 
 hours of twelve and four o'clock. 
 
 N. B. It will be noticed that nothing has been repeated in 
 the foregoing statement which is contained in my letters as 
 published in the Albany papers. 
 
 REMARKS ON THE CHLORIDES AND CHLORINE. 
 
 The Chlorides and Chlorine as " Disi?ifecting Age7its,'^ and as 
 Preveyitives of Cholera. By Henry Bronson, M.D. 
 
 [Communicated for the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.] 
 
 Some weeks ago, in a series of letters from Canada, I ventured 
 to make some remarks respecting the anti-cholera powers of 
 medicines as preventives. Strong doubts were expressed of 
 their utility, or even safety, whether taken into the stomach or 
 breathed in the form of fumes or gases. Even chlorine was 
 thought exceptionable. My object was to shake the public 
 confidence in all nostrums and specifics for the preservation of
 
 health, and in all substitutes ior real cleanliness. For all this I 
 was censured. My sentiments were judged heterodox. My 
 object now is to show the grounds of my opinions as then 
 expressed, and particularly to state the arguments and the 
 facts which bear upon the question as to the efi&cacy of the 
 chlorides as " disinfecting agents." 
 
 It seems to be taken for granted b}^ most non-professional and 
 b}^ man}^ professional men who have thought little upon the sub- 
 ject, that a disease which is ascertained to originate and spread 
 independentlj^ of a contagious influence, is of course atmospher- 
 ical. This is entirely a gratuitous supposition, unsupported by 
 a single fact, and contradicted by many obvious truths. If it is 
 said that there is any change in the component parts of the at- 
 mosphere, the assertion is destitute of proof. The most accurate 
 philosophical analyses and experiments can detect no altera- 
 tion. Its proportions are the same where cholera is raging in 
 its direct form, and where no such disease is present. If it is 
 afl&rmed that a foreign substance in the form of a gas or vapor, 
 or in some other state, is introduced into the air, combining or 
 mixing with it, and b}^ its deleterious action upon the system 
 giving a predisposition to the disease in question, the asser- 
 tion again is void of proof. No one has ever discovered such 
 substance, and facts would seem to render its existence impos- 
 sible. Ponderable matter in any shape, even though it be a 
 gas or vapor in the most tenuous form, when diffused in the 
 atmosphere, is subject to the laws of matter. It moves with 
 the element which contains it ; it is driven by currents. But 
 can the course of the cholera be calculated by the course of the 
 winds, like the smoke of our chimneys or the clouds over our 
 heads ? Is it facilitated or retarded in its march by the motion 
 of the atmosphere ? It travels with the same equal and resist- 
 less step in the face of the monsoons of India as when aided 
 by the strength of a tempest. It does not receive wings from 
 the hurricane, nor is its flight arrested by a calm. 
 
 If I am asked the essential, non-contagious cause of cholera, 
 I answer frankly — / do not knozc. Every agent in nature, 
 real or imaginary, has been accused. Electricity, magnetism,
 
 earth, air, water, sun, moon, planets, comets, have each been 
 arraigned in vain. There is a mystery which hangs over the 
 origin and spread of epidemics, which will probabh' never be 
 removed. The philosophers of the present daj' are no wiser 
 on this subject than those who lived three thousand years ago. 
 
 There is, then, not a particle of evidence that the general 
 atmosphere where cholera prevails is changed, or contains 
 any impurit}-. On the contran,-, all the evidence which exists 
 upon the subject is against such a supposition. What folly, 
 then — what short of empiricism — to charge the elements we 
 breathe with the smoke of gunpowder, the fumes of tar, brim- 
 stone, camphor, with chlorine and every species of stench, for 
 the purpose of purifying it and rendering it wholesome ! Does 
 common sense teach us to introduce into the air b}^ which we 
 are enveloped, which contributes to sustain us, and which 
 there is every reason to believe pure, a known noxious sub- 
 stance (chlorine), for the purpose of neutralizing or destroying 
 an unknown something of unknown powers, and of improb- 
 able existence ? It scouts the idea. 
 
 Among the various substances which from time to time have 
 been brought forward and lauded as "disinfecting agents," 
 chlorine is perhaps the only one which at the present day 
 describes attention. The parade of pretended science with 
 which its claims have been urged and defended, and the 
 specious but superficial reasoning with which they have been 
 supported, render its nature and its asserted powers worthy 
 of examination. 
 
 Chlorine (the active principle evolved from the chlorides) is 
 one of those acrid and poisonous gases which when respired in 
 an}- considerable quantities occasion serious derangement in the 
 animal econom}-, or even destroy life. It produces great irri- 
 tation of the bronchial passages — manifested b}- heat, pain, 
 stricture, etc. — which is followed by inflammation and destruc- 
 tion of the function of the lungs. If an animal is immersed in 
 it he dies suddenly of asphyxia. When largely diluted with 
 common air, it occasions cough, dizziness, tightness across the 
 chest, and an urgent desire for fresh air. These effects, if
 
 they do not result in speedy inflammation, or throw the system 
 into some disease to which it may be at the time strongly pre- 
 disposed, gradually cease as the constitution becomes accus- 
 tomed to the agent. Like other poisons, by incessant and 
 protracted use, it finally becomes comparatively inert. The 
 system calls into requisition its powers of resistance, gradually 
 adapts itself to the noxious substance, and finally tolerates it 
 with little injury. In very minute doses, it may be breathed 
 without any appreciable efiecSls. All the virulent poisons, 
 such as arsenic, prussic acid, nux- vomica, bohun upas, opium, 
 etc., may be used in small quantities with safety ; yet who 
 would think of employing them except for urgent sickness ? 
 "Who would be mad enough to swallow them on the suppo- 
 sition of his possible illness, when he has every symptom of 
 health ? And who would be willing to inhale the noxious 
 fumes of the chlorides because some visionary has idly con- 
 jectured that the air may be impure, when it has every appear- 
 ance of purity, and when at the same time the fadl is assumed 
 — not proved — that chlorine has an universal power over atmo- 
 spherical contaminations ? 
 
 Of the efiect of chlorine in destroying some of the fetid 
 gases, I am well aware. It does this (generally at least) by its 
 powerful aflanity for one of the elements (hydrogen) in the 
 composition of those gases, detaching it, entering into com- 
 bination with it, and destroying the compound. This is a 
 common efiect of chlorine. But there are offensive gases upon 
 which it has no effect ; at least, when used in such small quan- 
 tities as not to render the air which contains it irrespirable. 
 The truth of this remark I have often proved in dissecting 
 rooms. In such places the "purifier" has often failed to 
 remove stench, even when the apartment was strongly impreg- 
 nated with it, as evidenced by the senses and the appropriate 
 tests. A similar failure has often happened when a strong 
 solution has been applied to decomposing animal matter. 
 Sores and ulcers giving forth an offensive effluvium have not 
 been uniformly deprived of their fetor by its application. 
 Similar results have been witnessed b}^ others. Chlorine,
 
 then, is no more of a specific for stench than Swain's panacea is 
 for indigestion. This is readily accounted for. Fetid gases 
 are not necessarilj- compounds of hydrogen ; and those that 
 are so may retain this element by a strength of affinitj' which 
 is too powerful for chlorine to overcome. Such gases or sub- 
 stances are often, probably, of a specific nature — peculiar 
 proximate principles formed by peculiar chemical agencies. 
 When such is the fadl, "the universal purifier" is little 
 better than burning tar or feathers. While chlorine, then, is 
 an agent of considerable power in destroying bad smells, 
 entering chemically into combination with one or more of 
 the elements which compose them, it is not a specific. 
 
 It is believed that the knowledge of the power of chlorine 
 over offensive odors first suggested its use as a " disinfectant." 
 At the time of this suggestion, the shades of alchem)" were 
 not entirely dispelled. Men occasionally dreamed about "the 
 philosopher's stone," and "the elixir of life." Chemistry 
 was thought to have an importance among the sciences 
 which it does not possess. Not only inorganic matter, but 
 organic beings, were supposed under the dominion of its laws. 
 The animal fluids were considered definite chemical compounds, 
 which it was not beyond the powers of the laborator>^ to simu- 
 late. The matter of contagion was considered a gas not unlike 
 what ' ' chemists are accustomed to catch in their receivers, ' ' 
 and the cause of epidemic and malarious diseases a similar 
 gas floating in the atmosphere. The foul air which commonly 
 surrounds the beds of the sick was identified with these aerial 
 poisons, and it became an object to correct it. The "puri- 
 fier" (chlorine) was applied. If odor could be removed, or 
 drowTied and rendered imperceptible by a more powerful 
 stench, all was considered safe. This is the waj- in which the 
 ' ' preventive ' ' came into use. The chemist, instead of trying 
 his infallible and collecting facts in proof of its eflBcacy, sat 
 quietly speculating in his closet. If his dogmas were doubted, 
 he refuted the sceptics b}- an appeal to experiments made in 
 his laboratory. This is the kind of science which has made so 
 much noise in this matter. 
 
 46
 
 There is a great error prevalent — particularly among those 
 of little medical reading — respecting the agency in disease of 
 those gases perceptible by the senses which are evolved from 
 decomposing organic matter. Though I cannot persuade 
 myself that they are entirely harmless, yet abundant observa- 
 tion has conclusively proved that they act a very subordinate 
 part in the production of disease. There is the best reason to 
 believe that the deleterious principle which is evolved from . 
 filth — from vegetable and animal matters in a state of decompo- 
 sition — does not reside in those effluvia which are most obnox- 
 ious to the sense of smell ; but in something else which is 
 tasteless, inodorous, and often too subtle for the tests of chemis- 
 try to detect. There are numerous facts which show the 
 inadequacy of the fetid gases alone to produce serious derange- 
 ments of the health, much more endemic or epidemic diseases. 
 The stench of slaughter-houses, barn-yards, privies, dissecting 
 rooms, masses of putrifying animal matter, etc., particularly 
 where there is free ventilation, although so concentrated as to 
 produce occasional nausea and vomiting in those unaccustomed 
 to it, and so abundant and diffusible as to impregnate the air 
 for a furlong around, has been satisfactorily shown to have 
 often no effect upon the health of those who are constantly 
 exposed to it. Upon the seashore of New England, the 
 farmers make much use of fish as a manure, leaving them to 
 putrify and dissolve upon the soil. A powerful and most 
 ofiensive odor is evolved, which is conveyed on the winds to 
 the distance of miles, sickening the stomachs of passers-by ; 
 and yet no ill effects are experienced by those who turn up 
 and till the ground. The facts of this description are so com- 
 mon that many physicians have contended that anhnal putre- 
 faction is never productive of sickness. If fetid exhalations 
 were of themselves sufficient to occasion permanent disease, 
 or were indicative of an atmosphere necessarily unwholesome, 
 surely no such facts ought to exist. 
 
 Again, intermittents, bilious fever and yellow fever, which 
 are generally admitted to be produced by the effluvia of animal 
 and vegetable relics (particularly the latter) in a state of
 
 decomposition, frequenth' prevail to a most alarming extent, 
 and with singular fatalitj-. when the senses recognize no con- 
 tamination of the air, and when of course no fetid gases 
 exist. We come to the conclusion, then, which has often been 
 arrived at, that fetor merely has little to do ^\-ith sickness or 
 health — that decomposing organic matter often evolves a most 
 deadly poison which has neither smell nor taste — that the 
 removal of nauseous odors in using the means of cleanliness 
 is a matter of secondary- importance — and that the emplo>-ment 
 of chlorine, as one of these means, which has no ascertained 
 power over anything but stench, and only a limited power 
 over this, is of little real ser\4ce. 
 
 But suppose the fetid gases are deleterious to health ; and 
 suppose that chlorine, under favorable circumstances, will 
 destro}' them : is it eas}- to regulate the quantity of the latter 
 necessar}- to decompose the former, and have none in excess ? 
 Is it not alwaj'S required that the chlorine should be greatly 
 in excess in order to eflfect this decomposition with any cer- 
 tainty* ? And is not this />-(?<? chlorine productive of altogether 
 greater and more certain injur\- than could possibly have 
 resulted from the eflBu\4a it was designed to destroy ? But on 
 the supposition that the ' ' disinfecting agent ' ' can be employed 
 in the precise quantity required to decompose an offensive gas, 
 and does actually decompose it, what is the result ? A sub- 
 stance is formed, consisting of chlorine and the h5-drogen 
 which it has detached from the offensive compound. This is 
 muriatic acid gas. It is acrid, irritating and irrespirable ; as 
 poisonous as chlorine, and far more destructive to life than the 
 fetid gases for which it is a substitute. A bad smell is indeed 
 exchanged for one more tolerable ; but at the same time, an 
 agent decidedly noxious is added to the atmosphere in the 
 place of one which was hardly injurious. 
 
 In the preceding remarks on the employment of chlorine, I 
 have considered it as mingled with the air we breathe — the waj' 
 in which it is ordinarilj' recommended and used. But there is 
 another mode of employing it. The apartment to be purified 
 maj- be vacated, a vessel containing the materials for evolving
 
 the gas placed within it, and the doors and windows closed. 
 The room is thus soon filled with the chlorine. After a few 
 hours, it may be opened and thoroughly ventilated. If every- 
 thing which is capable of contaminating the air has been pre- 
 viously removed, the apartment will now perhaps be found 
 sweet and wholesome. But chlorine gas is not the only one 
 which will do the same. Any of those which have energetic 
 decomposing powers will accomplish as much. The nitrous 
 acid gas has often been efifedlually used for this purpose. 
 Indeed, the free use of soap and water alone, aided by a plenty 
 of pure air, never fails to answer a similar end. While the 
 efifedls of the latter are equally or more certain, they cannot 
 always be used without endangering the health. 
 
 Of the power of chlorine over the principle of contagion or 
 infection, so roundly asserted bj^ some modern alchemists, 
 there is not a particle of evidence. True, indeed, if you could 
 catch this principle in the bowl of a spoon, and pour upon it a 
 concentrated solution of chlorine, there is little doubt you 
 would destroy its activity. You might do the same with 
 nitric, or muriatic, or sulphuric acid, or any other powerful 
 chemical agent. The virus of smallpox or cowpox may be 
 readily destro5^ed in this way. The mode in which this is 
 done may be easilj^ conceived, by observing the adlion of oil of 
 vitriol or lunar-caustic upon the surface of a fresh wound on 
 the body. A complicated chemical change is efifedled, the 
 nature of which is not exacftly understood. But I am not con- 
 sidering the influence of chemical agents on the contagious 
 virus enclosed in vessels, but when diflfused in the atmosphere. 
 When in this state, if the ' ' disinfedlant ' ' in quantities not irre- 
 spirable can destroy it, those who assert that it can, ought to 
 prove it. This has not been and cannot be done. 
 
 On a question of the kind under consideration (the ' ' disin- 
 fe(5ling ' ' power of chlorine), the burthen of proof devolves 
 upon the advocates of the chlorides. Until they have collected 
 an adequate number oi faHs (not inferences) in support of their 
 case, their statements are deserving of little credit. But where 
 are these fadts? The subjedl has been long before the public.
 
 The claims of chlorine have been asserted and reasserted. It 
 has been employed for a length of time and on an extensive 
 scale in epidemic, endemic, and contagious diseases ; and what 
 is the result ? It has been used in cholera wherever this dis- 
 ease has appeared — in Russia, Germany, France, England, 
 Canada, and the United States ; and what that is new have its 
 advocates to say in its favor ? Were its powers such as they 
 have been maintained to be, would not this matter long ago 
 have been put to rest, and the voice of cavilers and sceptics 
 silenced ? No new evidence seems to have been gathered upon 
 the subje(5l. Nine-tenths of the medical world still go on 
 doubting, while chemists still continue their scientific reveries, 
 publishing to the world their closet speculations, and anon 
 repeating the stale story about "the cathedral of Dijon." 
 When the cholera commenced its ravages in Albany, high 
 hopes were entertained of arresting its progress by the chlo- 
 rides. All took good care to lay in a supply of "the pre- 
 ventive." Everything inside and out was deluged with the 
 * ' disinfedling " gas. One's chance of safety seemed to be con- 
 sidered directly as the quantity of chlorides he had with and 
 about him. What followed ? The disease increased, as it had 
 been wont to do in other places. Men sickened and died. 
 Some fell victims with "the immortal catholicon " in their 
 pockets ! People lost confidence in their protector. It went 
 out of fashion and was abandoned, and presentlj^ the pestilence 
 took wings. While the epidemic was among us, I watched 
 closely and incessantly^ the efiedl of the means which were used 
 as preventives. Burning tar, the fumes of sulphur, and the 
 exhalations from the chlorides, were all fairly beaten. The 
 latter seemed nothing better than the others ; that is, it was of 
 no ser\dce at all. I have diligently searched, and have not 
 been able to coUedl a single unequivocal fadl to show that its 
 use has with us been attended with the least benefit. Nor have 
 I met with one who has been more fortunate than m5'Self. Many 
 who were its advocates in the beginning, were faithless towards 
 the close. Most of the physicians here are now either indiffer- 
 ent or entirely sceptical as regards the ' ' disinfector. ' '
 
 But has chlorine had no positive injurious efFecfts in the pro- 
 fusion in which it has been used as a cholera preventive ? Is it 
 easy to conceive that the inhalation of so noxious and powerful 
 an agent can be a matter of indifference, especially when the 
 system is in a state of lively susceptibility to the acftion of 
 causes disturbing the health ? Where cholera prevails, there 
 is an universal predisposition to disease — a predisposition which 
 is kindled into a fatal blaze by the application of a spark. An 
 injurious impression made upon the body, whether through 
 the medium of the stomach or lungs, which in other circum- 
 stances would be produdlive of little harm, will in this state be 
 followed by sickness and death. Is it safe, then, to recommend 
 the general breathing of chlorine where this epidemic is rag- 
 ing ? Is it not eminently hazardous ? Would not this meas- 
 ure, if adopted, instead of preventing the disease, add to the 
 exciting causes of an attack ? 
 
 But what are the fa^s upon this subjedl ? Enough have 
 occurred in this city to satisfy any candid mind that the gas 
 exhaled from the chlorides is not innoxious — that it cannot be 
 respired with impunity where epidemic cholera is prevailing — 
 that its tendency is to augment and not to diminish the number 
 of the sick. It has taken rank here among the numerous excit- 
 ing causes of disease, and has not been least in importance. I 
 have experienced inconvenience from it myself, in common with 
 many others. The effe<5ts on susceptible persons have often 
 been powerful. On such, a state approaching asphyxia has 
 sometimes been produced while walking the streets. An 
 attack of the epidemic has in more than one instance been 
 satisfactorily traced to the free respiration of chlorine. One 
 physician has mentioned to me a remarkable instance. All the 
 members of a large and respedlable family were seized with the 
 symptoms of the malady within eighteen hours after a liberal 
 use of the " preventive " in all parts of their dwelling. Their 
 physician not unreasonably attributed their sickness to the said 
 "preventive." I could mention other instances hardly less 
 melancholy. I learn from a private letter, from a respe(ftable 
 source, that effedls of a similar description were witnessed in
 
 Paris, during their late epidemic, on a much larger scale. 
 Chlorine, then, is about as much of a cholera preventive as 
 ardent spirits. 
 
 But there is an indircft injury which is liable to result from 
 the recommendation and use of the chlorides, which has not 
 yet been alluded to, and which is of no slight magnitude. If 
 the people are made to understand that these substances are 
 adequate to the purposes of cleanliness, they will resort to them 
 on the score of economy, to the negledl of more eflFedlual and 
 expensive means. We might argue this from the known men- 
 tal constitution of man. This was argued and the consequences 
 predicted. What was feared has taken place. Cleanliness with 
 us has been negledled. Faith in the " disinfectants " has been 
 one cause of the neglect. Filth, instead of being removed, has 
 been too often merely sprinkled or mixed with the chlorides. 
 This has not only been done about dwellings, but ivithm them. 
 I have seen the floors, furniture, etc. , literally plastered with a 
 mixture of filth and "preventives." Removal has too fre- 
 quently been negle(5led, even when practicable, in consequence 
 of its being thought unnecessary. It is laborious and expen- 
 sive, and was so considered. Besides, it is an antiquated mode 
 of making clean, and, moreover, is highly tinscientific. The 
 new and unproved plan was enthusiasticallj- adopted. Matters 
 were conducted on chemical pri?iciples. Common sense was 
 scouted, and her place occupied by a nobler genius — the genius 
 of philosophy. The old and vulgar means of purifying, such as 
 washing, and scouring with soap and water, ventilation, sweep- 
 ing, scraping and removing, etc., were frequently abandoned, 
 not only as costly, but as behind the improveinetits of the age. 
 
 Considerable authority has been quoted on the question 
 under examination, which would seem to controvert the opin- 
 ions and arguments which have been advanced. Though 
 ajithority, unsupported bj' fadls and reasoning, passes for little 
 with me, it may do with some. By the way, if a question 
 relating to the ' ' disinfecting ' ' power of a substance is to be 
 determined by the numbers of those who assert it — those who 
 give their opinions and then vouch for their truth — chlorine is
 
 not entitled to our exclusive confidence. The nitrous acid gas 
 was once brought forward with extravagant pretensions as a 
 purifyer and antidote to contagious and miasmatic emanations ; 
 and if its efl&cacy is to be judged of by the numbers and 
 respedlability of those who attest it, it is far better deserving 
 of consideration and respedl than the modern specific : and yet, 
 the nitrous acid gas is now little thought of by the scientific 
 world. This is because its inodus operandi in destroying mor- 
 bific miasms cannot be explained by chemical laws ! [See Med- 
 ico- Chirurgical Review, Vol. X, page 355.] For the benefit of 
 those whose minds are swaj'ed by authority and names, I shall 
 make a few extra(5ts — all which my limited space will allow — 
 chiefly from medical writings, for the purpose of showing the 
 sense of the profession on the powers of the chlorides as ' ' dis- 
 infedling agents." And here may I take the liberty to say, 
 that physiciayis [all M.D.'s are not physicians], from their 
 opportunity for observation, their intimate knowledge oi fa6ls 
 and all their bearings, and their acquaintance with the corredl 
 mode of reasoning on medical subjecfts, are best capable of pass- 
 ing a corredt judgment on a question like that under considera- 
 tion. Those who have appeared as the advocates for chlorine 
 has been almost to a man chemists, who have no praH-ical knowl- 
 edge of the subjedl which they have handled. Their /a^.y have 
 been gathered in the laboratory. Their conclusions have been 
 the fruit of study. Their philosophy has been the result of 
 speculation. How much, then, are their assertions and opin- 
 ions worth ? 
 
 Dr. Caldwell, of Kentucky, a gentleman of general science 
 and of great eminence in his profession, uses strong language 
 upon this subjecft. 
 
 " Combustion excepted, I repeat, that thorough washing and 
 ventilation are the only certain means discovered to purify foul 
 and sickly ships, and render them the abodes of cleanliness and 
 health. Of hospitals and infirmaries the same is true. 
 
 "It is not only useless, then, it is injurious, to fill the 
 wards of receptacles of the sick with suffocating and irritating 
 fumes and gases, to the annoyance and distress of patients with
 
 tender eyes and weak lungs. I have never seen a place thus 
 fumigated, without exciting among the sick painful coughing 
 and other disagreeable affections. And if disinfection seemed 
 to be the result of the process, it was owing to the other means 
 used at the same time, and not to fumigation. 
 
 " Shall I be told, in objection to my opinion on this subje<5l, 
 that chlorine gas and some others destroy the fetid exhalations 
 emitted by putrid animal matter, and in that way contribute to 
 purity ? The fadl is known to me : but it is also known, that 
 such exhalation is not the febrile miasm of which I am treat- 
 ing. That poison exists in its most \-inilent and destructive 
 condition unaccompanied by any odor. It does not follow, 
 therefore, that because chlorine gas destroys the fetor arising 
 from the dissolution of animal or vegetable substances, it will 
 also destroy the poison. This loose substitute for reasoning is 
 an abundant source of error and mischief. Nothing but an 
 accurate and successful experiment is competent to prove that 
 any known gas is capable of uniting with febrile malaria, and 
 neutrahzing it. And as far as I have been informed myself, such 
 an experiment has never yet been made, Hence the belief in 
 the (anti) miasmatic properties of the gases referred to is noth- 
 ing but hypothesis." — [American Journal of Medical Sciences 
 for August, 1 83 1.] 
 
 Dr. Drake, of Cincinnati, a physician of great celebrity, uses 
 the following language : 
 
 ' ' Not the least reliance is to be placed on lime and its chlo- 
 rides as direct preventives of epidemic cholera ; and no great 
 confidence ought to be reposed in their power over nuisances. 
 It is better to remove putrescent matters than to correcl their 
 stench with lime, or even the boasted chloride. Moreover, an 
 independent use of the last may and often has proved injurious 
 to health ; the chlorine gas which is liberated being, if breathed 
 undiluted with atmospheric air, a more deadly poison than that 
 which produces cholera." — [Treatise on Epidemic Cholera, 
 July, 1832.] 
 
 Dr. Tully, of New Haven, whose standing as a professional 
 man and as a chemical philosopher entities his opinions to great 
 weight, in a private letter, dated August, 1832, says :
 
 ' ' I concur with you most fully in regard to the supposed 
 eflScacy of the chloroxids of calcium and sodium (in other 
 words the chlorides), and even chlorine itself, either for the 
 destruction of specific contagious, morbific miasmata, or epi- 
 demic causes, whatever they may be. I have come to this con- 
 clusion because I have not seen even a particle of evidence in 
 favor of what is called their disin/ening powers. I do not 
 know, however, that, on a subjedl of this nature, a negative 
 can be proved. The onus probandi must rest on those in the 
 afl&rmative. Now where are the proofs ? If there are any, 
 would they not long before this have been adduced ? That 
 the chloroxids, and especially the chlorine itself, will fre- 
 quently destroy offensive smells or odors, I do not pretend to 
 question ; but they certainly do not do this universally. I 
 have myself often known them fail. 
 
 "It is well known by physicians that those effluvia which 
 are most manifest to the senses possess but little if any power 
 in the production of disease ; while those which are most nox- 
 ious have no sensible properties. The contagion of smallpox 
 and measles, and the power or influence by which jail fever is 
 produced, cannot be recognized by the senses. 
 
 ' ' I have long been satisfied, that washing with soap and 
 water, and ventilation, are the only adequate means of purifi- 
 cation and, I will add, disinfection (as the fashionable and cant 
 phrase of the day is). 
 
 "In addition, it appears to me that the chlorides, when 
 freely used, may do injury. They may prove exciting causes 
 of disease, when the predisposition is strong, like other noxious 
 exhalations." 
 
 Dr. Yates, of New York, makes some very sensible remarks 
 on this subjedl : 
 
 ' ' The power of ' disinfecting agents, ' except on stench and 
 putridity, I deem extremely problematical. We want proof 
 that the atmosphere is less pure now than at other seasons. 
 We want proof — only probable proof that the air contains a par- 
 ticle of infe(5ling matter, ' ' etc.
 
 " But allowing that imperceptible particles of infedtious mat- 
 ter exist in the atmosphere, what proof have we that the chlo- 
 rides will alter their nature or their properties ? Only from this 
 analogical deducflion, that inasmuch as chloride destroys the 
 stench of putridity, it must of consequence destroy the sub- 
 stance matter of infe(5tion — an unphilosophical deduction at 
 best. But let us come to a case in point. Will chloride 
 destroy the poisonous quality of arsenic, the emetic property 
 of antimony, or the soporific effect of opium ? If not, what 
 right have we to suppose it will otherwise efFedl an imaginary 
 particle of poisonous matter floating in the atmosphere ? We 
 cannot know, from anything that has yet been discovered, that 
 chlorides have the slightest chemical influence on the quality 
 of a?iy matter except its odor, much less on that of the matter 
 in question. Hence, I conclude that all the expense incurred 
 in their distribution throughout our streets and yards, is a 
 mere boon to public alarm and prejudice." — [Yates on Asiatic 
 or Spasmodic Cholera, August, 1832.] 
 
 I shall now make an extract from a letter from Dr. Parsons, 
 of Providence, to a gentleman in Boston. The letter was 
 designed to show the ineflBcacj^ of the " disinfectants." 
 
 "The sloop Hero sailed from New York on the 17th of July 
 (1832), with thirty' passengers on board, and was quarantined 
 at Newport eight days from her time of leaving that city. On 
 the day of landing the passengers, four of them were immedi- 
 ately attacked with Asiatic cholera, and died in a few hours. 
 This vessel had Jive ions of best Scotch chloride of lime on board, 
 shipped on the 14th of said month ; any one cask of which, the 
 owner informs me, would give out through the staves sufiicient 
 gas to saturate the atmosphere of the vessel as efleclually as 
 would be done if the floors and decks were sprinkled with the 
 powder. Yet with thirty such caskets between her decks, this hap- 
 pens to be the o?ily vessel out of the great 7iumber arriving with 
 passengers from New York, that has brought any person infected 
 with the disease.'^ 
 
 This statement, I think, must prove of diflScult digestion to 
 the advocates of ' 'preventives. ' ' It contains an argument which 
 
 56
 
 may serve any purpose but theirs. It seems to prove that chlo- 
 rine is not the specific, after all — that science is not always 
 triumphant. It reveals a fact which may be justly regarded 
 as an outrage on rational chemistry. 
 Albany, September 6, 1832." 
 
 [l^ETTER SIX.] 
 
 Albany, July 12th, i8j2. 
 
 Dear Sir — The epidemic cholera has appeared among us 
 within the last few days. The first cases we had of it were on 
 the morning of the 3d instant. At that time, two persons of 
 intemperate habits were taken down with the disease in its 
 worst form, which proved fatal, in each instance, within the 
 course of a few hours. On the 4th, there was another case, 
 and on the 5th two others. All these were of a very decided 
 chara(5ler. They occurred in distant and unconnedted parts of 
 the cit)^ and had no intercourse with each other. They are 
 universally believed to have been of indigenous origin. Every 
 effort to trace them to contagion has entirely failed. 
 
 Though I am willing to admit all the fa^s on the side of the 
 anti-contagionists, I am still a decided advocate for the doc- 
 trine of contingent contagion, as maintained by J. Johnson and 
 others of the present day. I am firmly of the opinion, that 
 cholera may be contagious under particular circumstances. I 
 am led to think so not only from what has been noticed here, 
 but from what was witnessed on a much larger scale in Mon- 
 treal and the other seats of cholera in the north. The 
 truth seems to be this : — the disease is contagious (the terms 
 contagion and infection are used as synonyms) in crowded, 
 unventilated dwellings, amid filth, intemperance, and poverty, 
 but rarely or never in cleanly, airy apartments, the inhabitants 
 of which are regular and temperate, well fed, and well clothed. 
 I,et a cholera patient be thrown into a tenement of the former
 
 description, and one-half of the wretches about him will be 
 almost sure to sicken within the space of three da3-s ; while a 
 habitation at a distance, under precisely the same circum- 
 stances, as it regards its location and internal economy, and 
 the habits of those who live in it, will perhaps for the present 
 escape. Numerous instances might be referred to, exactly in 
 point. The manner in which the conclusion derived from 
 them is commonly evaded, is extremely disingenuous, and 
 would be instantly scouted at in any other branch of physical 
 science. 
 
 Some weeks before the appearance of cholera among us, 
 there was almost an entire suspension of all other diseases. 
 The state of things resembled the calm that precedes the storm. 
 It was evident that the epidemic constitution was about chang- 
 ing. The complaints that were noticed were strangely anoma- 
 lous and irregular. They often blended, and produced hybrids, 
 or a more compound disease. Influenza, measles, whooping 
 cough, and scarlet fever (the three former of which were very 
 rife and severe here during the winter), frequently seemed to 
 unite in the same person, producing a disease of such an equiv- 
 ocal characler, that it was diflScult to tell which element in 
 its composition preponderated. Sometimes a number of cases 
 would occur in a single family, in immediate succession — one 
 of which, had it been an isolated case, wotdd have been called 
 measles : another, scarlet fever ; and another, perhaps, in- 
 fluenza, or a kind of sub-pneumonia, &c. Intermittents (which 
 were common) put on an unusual appearance ; they were com- 
 plicated, irregular, marked. At last, about three or four weeks 
 before the cholera appeared, complaints began to assume a 
 diarrhoeal form, showing distinctly the commencement of a new 
 epidemic constitution. As these became more frequent, and 
 more marked in their character, other diseases gradually dis- 
 appeared, until they were all lost in the prevailing disorder. 
 They were at this time easily managed, and very rarely 
 assumed a serious aspect. They aSec~ted the public health so 
 triflingly, that it was considered a time of unusual freedom 
 from sickness. Phj-sicians had little or nothing to do. The 
 
 58
 
 smallness of the number of deaths in our city was almost 
 unexampled. 
 
 The commingling of diseases above referred to, producing 
 anomalies of almost every description, as if opposite and con- 
 tending forces had met, and each struggled for the mastery, 
 was observed during the first part of the present year, in the 
 places which I visited at the north, where cholera has prevailed. 
 Bowel complaints, too, were the immediate precursors of the 
 epidemic, showing, first, the preponderance, and in a short 
 time the complete formation of the present constitution. Not- 
 withstanding these intestinal disorders, it was a time of gen- 
 eral freedom from sickness requiring professional attendance. 
 This fadl was so extraordinary in some places, as to excite the 
 surprise of medical men. In St. Johns, where cholera raged 
 to a considerable extent, the like had never before been wit- 
 nessed. Very respe(5lfully yours, 
 
 Henry Bronson. 
 
 With his strong individuality, and his great force 
 of character, and with his exceptionally high qualifi- 
 cations for maintaining an independent professional 
 standing, it would only have been natural if he had 
 soon tired of the secondary position he was then 
 occupying. 
 
 However that may have been, it was not long after 
 his return from Canada, and making his final report 
 to the honorable committee that had sent him abroad, 
 before we find him, at the urgent solicitations of his 
 father, and of the leading citizens of his native town, 
 returned to Waterbury. Here he easily held the
 
 foremost rank as a medical man of rare attainments, 
 as he doubtless would have done anj-where, and began 
 at once a countr}- practice, large from the first, which 
 rapidly became extended over a ver}' wide field, and 
 soon was counted as by far the largest in Connecticut, 
 and probabl}- in New England. 
 
 During the closing da^-s of that j^ear, 1832, Dr. 
 Bronson was waited upon b}' a commission of medical 
 gentlemen from Philadelphia, offering to him the 
 flattering proposal to become president of the leading 
 medical college there. The proposition was enter- 
 tained and discussed. But after a conference of the 
 most free and confidental nature, it was mutuallj^ 
 concluded that the only apparent obstacle to his 
 prompt acceptance of the in^-itation was his youth. 
 He had onh* then completed his 28th 3'ear. 
 
 In the beginning of the 3'ear 1833, "^'^ ^^^ ^^^ 
 5^oung friend engrossed with the arduous labors of a 
 countrj'- doclor, ambitious to perform to the fullest 
 extent everj- dut\- that could properl}* be required of 
 him. His long rides on horseback, over the hill 
 countr)'^ of northern and western Connecticut, and 
 over the line into Massachusetts, and up and do\\Ti 
 the Housatonic ^'alle}-, in the intense heats of sum- 
 mer, and the severitv of the winter's cold, were at 
 first in\'igorating to his constitutional health.
 
 But, after a few years of such hard and unremit- 
 ting discipline, to which were added the peculiar 
 anxieties and wearisome details common to such a 
 life, his health began to show signs of failure ; and it 
 was with reason feared by his friends and by himself 
 that, like his two brothers, one of whom was a physi- 
 cian, he was in great danger of falling a vi6lim to 
 that fell disease which annually has claimed as its 
 own, the most promising youth of New England. 
 And we feel obliged to add to the influence of his 
 incessant labors, and constant exposures to great 
 extremes of temperature, the general impairment of 
 his health and the weakening of the powers of resist- 
 ance against disease, caused by his experiences at 
 Montreal, from which probably he never entirely 
 recovered. 
 
 In the autumn of 1839, it became evident to him- 
 self and his friends that he would be compelled tem- 
 porarily to relinquish his practice, and seek recu- 
 peration in a milder climate. He left New York in 
 November, by a small sailing vessel, bound for the 
 Mediterranean, and after a long and uncomfortable 
 voyage was landed in Genoa, very much improved 
 in health. Spending the most trying months of the 
 winter in Rome and Naples — visiting more than once 
 such places of interest as Pompeii and Herculaneum, 
 he made the ascent of Vesuvius, going up to the very 
 rim of the crater. His daily journal, kept for the
 
 pleasure of his famil}^, is exceedingly full and inter- 
 esting in its connecled record of the usual series of 
 incidental experiences met with by tourists, and indi- 
 cates that he left behind him in ItaU' nothing 
 unvisited worth}^ of recorded notice. Taking passage 
 by steamer at Civita \>cchia, he visited and critically 
 explored Marseilles and Lyons, and passing slowly by 
 diligence across France to Paris, he found himself in 
 more congenial surroundings. Here he began again 
 his pedestrian excursions, \'isiting and describing all 
 the most noted churches, monuments and localities in 
 Paris, especially those of historic interest. He visited 
 here, as afterward in London, the hospitals and medi- 
 cal colleees and heard lecture some of the most 
 celebrated medical men in each of these capital cities — 
 visiting also libraries, museums and picture galleries, 
 and theaters — and his journal records most intelli- 
 gent judgments of their relative value and impor- 
 tance. 
 
 As an illustration of the chaotic state of the so- 
 called medical sciences in the last centurj-, and even 
 later, I maj- venture to sa}', without presuming to 
 speak with critical exactness, that the majority of 
 medical pracHtioners upon our continent, in every 
 period up to the earh' 3-ears of the present century, 
 have been incapable, through the absence of education, 
 of reasoning closel}* and logicall}' as to the causes
 
 and phenomena of disease ; while the entire popula- 
 tion were in accord with the do(5lors, and preferred to 
 believe with them that diseases could be cured only 
 by blood-letting — and by administering to the sick 
 powerful and vile combinations of vegetable and 
 mineral poisons, designed to shake to its very centre, 
 as they did, every organ of the body. 
 
 Within five or six years, I have seen an elaborately 
 written prescription of this sort, a recent production, 
 directing the combination of twelve a6live remedies, 
 reaching almost a cubit measure in length — but of 
 the extent of its range and of its destructive force no 
 report has ever been made. 
 
 These were the golden days of faith in drugs, when 
 poly-pharmacy was in the extreme of fashion, and the 
 dispensing of medicines was a most profitable voca- 
 tion. Most men in those early days were too illiter- 
 ate, and unable to escape from the grinding pressure 
 of the laws of necessity long enough to acquire a 
 scientific education ; and those supposed to be capa- 
 ble of imparting such knowledge were few, and being 
 mostly in the largest cities, they were inaccessible, 
 and had themselves become only partially emanci- 
 pated from the thraldom of false science, upon which 
 no processes of corre6l reasoning could be based ; so 
 that we cannot wonder, if men, ignorant of the great 
 fadls of human and comparative anatomy and physi-
 
 olog}-, established bj- the Almiglit}-, were for many 
 generations unable to comprehend that other and 
 greater facl, that under the unobstrucled operations 
 of the laws of nature, his creatures should be enabled, 
 in most cases, to throw off the diseases of which they 
 had become the \4ctims, through their ignorance of 
 those laws. 
 
 Xor is it surprising if in those early daj-s of dark- 
 ness, which have not yet entireU* disappeared, the 
 majorit}' of medical men could not be convinced that 
 a ven' large proportion of diseases, for the cure of 
 which they were daih* prescribing a multitude of very 
 active and disturbing drugs, were in point of fact 
 self-limited — and would, under the operation of natu- 
 ral laws disappear of themselves, if the doctors were 
 not in the waj-. 
 
 Neither were the people prepared to receive or to 
 tolerate such a doclrine ; and I am sorr\' to add that, 
 even in the present generation, such is the degree of 
 popular apathy or want of information that, compara- 
 tiveU', onl}' a few among the most enlightened people 
 an^'where, are able to appreciate the vast difference 
 there is between being cured and getting well. 
 
 Arriving at his home early in the spring of 1840, 
 Dr. Bronson reported himself to be in excellent 
 health, and almost immediately resumed his daily 
 routine of professional work.
 
 With his remarkable powers of mind strengthened 
 and heightened by his intimate acquaintance with 
 books, and enriched by the experiences of foreign 
 travel, and with a professional judgment matured in 
 that best of all schools, ten years of country prac- 
 tice, supplemented by clinical study in European 
 hospitals, and at the bedside, we can understand how 
 eminently qualified he now was to assume the respon- 
 sibilities of a public teacher of medicine. 
 
 As soon as he was fitted to fulfill these duties, the 
 place awaited his acceptance ; and in 1842 his ele6lion 
 as professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in 
 the faculty of his Alma Mater was hailed with great 
 satisfadlion by the medical profession in this and 
 the adjoining states. His acceptance of the eledlion, 
 however, rendered it necessary for him to remove his 
 residence to this city, where he made no efforts to 
 gain patients, but devoted himself wholly to his 
 college work, for ten years consecutively, when he 
 resigned his professorship. Responding to repeated 
 calls to resume his college duties, from time to time 
 he continued to instruct his classes until i860, when 
 his health again failing him, he spent the winter of 
 1859-60 in Barbadoes. 
 
 As a public teacher of medicine. Dr. Bronson was 
 eminently successful in the work of interesting 
 young men, and aiding them to acquire as full 
 
 6s
 
 knowledge of the dr}^ details of his department of 
 Materia Medica and Therapeutics as they were able 
 to retain. His lectures were mosth' written, and 
 were read slowl}^ in a clear, distinct voice, and an 
 impressive, deliberate manner, and they were listened 
 to with close attention. He also gave to his classes 
 occasional lectures upon topics outside of his regular 
 courses. The}- were almost unequaled in interest 
 and instru(fbion, particularh^ if he chose for his topic 
 some one of the great fundamental principles of med- 
 ical science. He was then at his best, and showed 
 the highest qualities of a great teacher ; he needed 
 the stimulus of a great subject to bring out the full 
 exercise of his powers. ^Man}- men, however, have 
 excelled him as a teacher of the elementary fa<5ls of 
 science, but as a writer upon medical philosophy he was 
 ver}'- attractive. The societ}'' is familiar with the 
 admirable and forcible style of his writing, in the 
 man)^ papers he has read before it. 
 
 Dr. Bronson inherited many of the strong points 
 of his intelledlual charac^ter from his father ; and so 
 generall}^ was this facl recognized b}' those among 
 whom each of these remarkable men was well known, 
 that it has often been said that a sketch that would 
 do justice to the father would be recognized as amply 
 sufficient for the son. But, in this estimate of the 
 mental qualities of our friend, those who knew him
 
 well are unwilling to concur. While it was undoubt- 
 edly true that in the natural elements of his char- 
 a(fi;er, as well as in the struAure of his moral and 
 intelledlual faculties, he greatly resembled his father, 
 having similar tastes, and upon many questions 
 arriving at similar conclusions from the same points 
 of view, and in some instances drawing the same 
 conclusions by the same course of instantaneous or 
 intuitive logical dedu6lion, and to a degree cherish- 
 ing the same excellent opinions of his own infalli- 
 bility of judgment, to which he had much better 
 reason than most men to lay claim ; certain it is, that 
 his powers of perception and analysis were more 
 subtle and acute, and he possessed in a greater degree 
 those mental traits, and that spirit of devotion to a 
 definite purpose and end which enabled him to pur- 
 sue successfully the lines of historic inquiry marked 
 out by his father, afifedling more or less closely large 
 numbers of families, comprising one of the wealthiest 
 of the wide-spreading industrial centres of our state. 
 He was by nature a historian ; and any one led by 
 motives of curiosity or of personal interest to exam- 
 ine critically the recorded history of Waterbury will, 
 I think, be surprised by the evidences of the labori- 
 ous personal investigations to ascertain necessary 
 fa6ls, and so far as was possible by persistent efforts 
 to gather them personally, and from the original 
 records.
 
 To say nothing of tlie gathering of historical fadls, 
 the labor of acquiring the traditions of a country side 
 through half a dozen populous manufa6luring towns, 
 and the preparation for the press of the biographical 
 sketches of a large number of business men, was 
 great and exhausting when added to the already 
 heavy burdens of a busy physician. The history of 
 Waterbury forms a compa6l volume of 600 pages, 
 with thirty portraits and many local views, engraved 
 on steel, and was in itself not a small undertaking 
 for one who could devote to it his entire time ; but 
 when we consider the very extended research required 
 to trace out the natives of Waterbury who had 
 removed to other States, we can form perhaps a just 
 estimate of the relative magnitude of the labor 
 expended upon even so small a work, carried on as it 
 was under the pressure of public duties, as well as of 
 professional and other literary labor. 
 
 That this arduous work was continued under very 
 discouraging circumstances, while it daily grew upon 
 his hands, was evident to those near enough to 
 observe ; and they could but admire and wonder at 
 the courage and perseverance with which, under so 
 many difi&culties, he completed his self-imposed task. 
 
 I have been familiar with a considerable number of 
 histories of towns and coiinties in New England, but 
 I know of none with the same limited scope that are 
 more valuable than this. Indeed, I may say without
 
 fear of contradidlion, tliat the beneficent influences 
 upon a New England community, of sucli a chronicle 
 of the " fa(5ls and opinions that were coincident with 
 the laying of the foundations of society, and which in 
 future generations shall mark in its successive edi- 
 tions the changes of an advancing civilization, cannot 
 be over-estimated. 
 
 Not by any means the least important of the his- 
 torical work accomplished by Dr. Bronson, was the 
 interesting series of historical and biographical papers 
 pertaining to the medical history of New Haven 
 County, and read before this society between Decem- 
 ber, 1872, and Odlober, 1876, comprising 150 pages 
 of Vol. 2 — including the professional histories of 
 eight members of the New Haven Medical Associa- 
 tion. He says in a prefatory statement, that in the 
 following papers " I have aimed to put in an endur- 
 ing form much valuable and often perishable material 
 gathered several years ago from many sources — 
 records, manuscripts, documents and letters, old 
 newspapers, traditions, and living witnesses. 
 
 In their preparation I hoped to make an acceptable 
 contribution to general history, and at the same time 
 render a special and much needed service to the med- 
 ical profession. 
 
 Before the Revolution there was not much inter- 
 course between the different se6lions of our country. 
 
 69
 
 A limited coasting trade along the Atlantic border 
 broueht the commercial classes in the maritime 
 towns into frequent contadl ; but the benefits of this 
 intercourse scarcely extended to the interior. 
 
 Bach colony — in many instances each town — was 
 to a large extent an isolated community. But the 
 war, which broke out in 1775, brought with it great 
 changes. It excited the wildest passions ; introduced 
 selfishness, corruption, vice, miser}^," and what in his 
 estimation was the worst of all the consequences of 
 war, " a deluge of paper money. But," he adds, 
 " certain advantages flowed from it." 
 
 The medical profession of the State highl}^ appre- 
 ciated the medical histories of Connedlicut, as pre- 
 pared for us by Dr. Bronson, in the very valuable 
 and interesting biographical notices of prominent 
 physicians in our early days, and read from time to 
 time before this society, as well as other papers on 
 the same general subje(5l, printed in the Proceedings 
 of the Connedlicut Medical Society. They still con- 
 tinue to be read as classics by all the medical men of 
 the State, whose tastes incline them to preserve the 
 historical literature of their profession ; but unfortu- 
 natel}^, owing to the ver}^ limited edition that was 
 published, these papers, being out of print, are no 
 longer generally obtainable.
 
 speaking further of tlie " days of tlie Revolution " 
 and tlie formative stages of the medical profession in 
 those turbulent times, he says, " Large bodies of men 
 were gathered from every quarter and associated for 
 military purposes ; and to supply them with food and 
 clothing, arms and equipments, an extended internal 
 trade was required. The se6lions near and remote 
 were for the first time brought face to face, and bound 
 together in desperate endeavor for a common obje6l. 
 Men who had before been strangers became co- 
 workers and personal friends. Though the standard 
 of morality was debased, they learned well the 
 advantages of union, of combined effort, and social 
 intercourse which they were slow to forget. The 
 accomplishments which individuals in high positions 
 possessed became by contact and the magnetism of 
 superior natures common property, and reproduced 
 their like. Emulation was excited and society 
 enlightened, and in a certain sense improved and 
 refined. 
 
 There were in the army a few accomplished and 
 many respectable physicians and surgeons who wit- 
 nessed and shared the benefits of united effort — of 
 familiar professional intercourse — and who, when 
 peace returned, feared the disintegration and depress- 
 ing influences of isolation. It was to prevent this 
 disastrous result to a fine body of medical men, who 
 had largely contributed to the success of the colonial
 
 armies in the field, and the independence of these 
 United States among the nations of the world, that 
 our army surgeons resolved themselves into county 
 and State organizations to promote professional excel- 
 lence, as well as to maintain, for the benefit of the 
 whole country^, the nucleus of what they saw was to 
 become one of the learned and most useful professions 
 upon our continent." 
 
 As a writer upon finance and political econom}-. 
 Dr. Bronson's opinions have always been received 
 with great respe(5l wherever thc}^ have become known. 
 He was an advocate of hard mone3\ His father also 
 was a local authority on financial questions, and 
 established the first bank in Waterbur}-, of which he 
 was alwa3''S the president during his life ; and nisiny 
 of the Bronson name, in this and other States, have 
 acquired renown as financiers, or as editors of finan- 
 cial journals and leading newspapers outside of New 
 England. 
 
 Dr. Bronson has read before this societ}- several 
 papers upon financial topics, which have been pub- 
 lished in its archives, and have attracted wide atten- 
 tion, — and I have high authorit}' for sa3ang that 
 these papers, or an}- one of them, would be sufficient 
 to establish a brilliant reputation for anj^ writer upon 
 financial questions.
 
 I need not remind tlie society that in 1863 lie read 
 before this body, at convenient intervals, a very 
 remarkable series of papers, having for its title as a 
 completed publication, " A Historical Accoimt of 
 ConneBicut Currency^ Continental Money^ and the 
 Finajices of the Revolution^'' pp. 192 — forming about 
 one-half of the first volume of the society's transac- 
 tions. 
 
 Ten years afterward, he read before you a sup- 
 plementary paper entitled, " The Money Problem 
 Agahi^'' — which was perhaps more easily understood 
 by the popular mind, but the first series was of 
 greater importance historically. 
 
 I had proposed to myself to insert here an abstract 
 of certain pages from the " Money Problem," in 
 which I was interested, but it occurs to me that while 
 I am not competent to generalize profitably upon the 
 subje6l, the members of the society are all familiar 
 with Dr. Bronson's financial views as set forth so 
 fully in the valuable papers he has from time to time 
 presented here. A financial authority and a close 
 student of political economy,"^ whose intimate relations 
 with Dr. Bronson qualified him to form a valuable 
 opinion, said of him : 
 
 * Mr. George A. Butler.
 
 " He took a deep interest in the currency question 
 during the whole period between the passage of the 
 Legal-Tender Adl and the resumption of specie pay- 
 ments. To him it was a practical question of the 
 deepest import, affedling in the most serious manner 
 the prosperity, welfare and happiness of the people of 
 this countrj^ He clearly foresaw the dreadful evils 
 and disasters that must inevitably result from that 
 legislation. 
 
 There was never any doubt in his mind, from the 
 day that measure passed Congress until the final 
 catastrophe, as to what the result of that legislation 
 would be. He condemned it as an economic blunder 
 of the greatest magnitude, but it was more than that 
 to him ; and as a patriot he felt and deplored the 
 injury it was to be to our finances through the evils 
 growing out of the war ; and as a man he sympa- 
 thized with those who lost their property by the 
 insidious working of an irredeemable legal-tender 
 paper money ; and because most of them would never 
 comprehend how their misfortunes came upon them." 
 
 Favored as he was by fortune and the circum- 
 stances of his birth, surrounded by the happy results 
 of wise and successful mechanical combinations, 
 pushed to the utmost limits of artistic development 
 by abundant capital and skill, we can see by what 
 an easy grade he became wealthy without exertion.
 
 Forming his views of finance in such a school, where 
 every scrap of metal was made to yield up its equiva- 
 lent of the gold basis that was in it, he could have 
 come naturally to no other conviction than the one 
 he so often expressed in respe6l to the financial con- 
 dudl of our late war, to wit : that the war could have 
 been as speedily and as successfully brought to a 
 conclusion on a specie basis as it was on a basis of 
 paper money — in either case the accumulation of an 
 immense debt was the inevitable result. The opin- 
 ions of wise men differed widely, however, on this 
 question, and do still differ ; but it is probable that 
 the majority of our people favored the use of a green- 
 back currency. Dr. Bronson attached himself to the 
 Herbert Spencer school of political economists. They 
 agree in their statements as to the shockingly deplor- 
 able condition in which are all existing things — 
 church and state and social organizations. They 
 leave us in no doubt as to what really onght to be the 
 aBual condition of the entire population of the world. 
 But they give us no idea of what is a possible and 
 practicable working plan, by means of which all 
 peoples can be placed on the same elevated plane, in 
 such relations as to secure to them universal happi- 
 ness. 
 
 Just at this point we may, perhaps, be able to trace 
 the beginning of a quality of his mind which, while
 
 it was not accompanied by any of those absurd 
 vagaries that are commonly supposed b}^ the weak 
 to indicate the adoption of infidel principles, and by 
 which phj'sicians are thought to be too easily influ- 
 enced, there was in the constitution of his mind a 
 notable absence of the element of faith as understood 
 by the Christian world — that " faith which is the sub- 
 stance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not 
 seen." Suppl3'ing its place, perhaps, if that were 
 possible, we find an absorbing reverence for the law 
 and the testimojiy. 
 
 His first requirement was for the fadls — the proofs 
 — and from these he deduced the law. There was in 
 his being no sentiment or shadow of irreligion. His 
 soul was devout, and his whole life without reproach. 
 He was honest, natural and simple-minded in all his 
 ways. True in everything which a good conscience 
 might approve, he abhorred and detested deceitful 
 men, and shams of ever}^ sort. Familiar, by pro- 
 tracted and repeated systematic study, with history, 
 theology and part}^ politics, he had no affinities with 
 the two last — considering them as resting upon 
 changeable and insecure foundations, and as not 
 essential to the highest welfare of mankind. 
 
 Dr. Bronson was alwaj^s deeply and intelligently 
 interested in securing for all the people^ fi-ee of cost^ 
 the best common school education, by the best teach- 
 
 76
 
 ers that could be procured — sucli an education as 
 would best Harmonize with the tastes, habits and 
 mental needs of the majority of our people ; and for 
 them he was always a strenuous advocate of a better 
 education, and of a much more pradlical kind than 
 was commonly afforded anywhere. But he was also 
 a decided opponent of the imaginative schemes of 
 those dreamers, none too well-educated themselves, 
 who desired to see all our common schools grouped 
 around Yale College — and so conformed as to consti- 
 tute the integral parts of a great University, inter- 
 dependent upon each other — while the powerfully 
 attractive force of the great central body, causing its 
 satellites to revolve in regular orbits about it, would 
 represent, in full operation, what has come now to be 
 known in some circles as the " University extension " 
 plan — by which incentives to acquire the elements of 
 a liberal education — a mere smattering of universal 
 knowledge — are held out to all as most desirable, 
 irrespedlive of their needs, or of their capacities to 
 receive an education. 
 
 The disappointing and unsatisfying fruits of this 
 system, designed to offer to all our youth a free 
 classical and scientific education, are to day painfully 
 apparent ; and our present system of free High School 
 education has come to be deprecated by an increasing 
 number of the best informed minds, as a sy stein of 
 education that does not educate — and as being in no
 
 sense adapted to supply the vital needs of that large 
 class whose lot in life will compel them to earn their 
 support by manual labor, or its equivalent. For 
 entertaining and defending these views he was vio- 
 lently assailed by anonymous but well known per- 
 sons, whose unwillingness to endorse their crude 
 notions by printing them over their true signatures 
 can no longer be regarded with surprise. But he was 
 sustained as to the intrinsic validity of his opinions 
 by his abiding convid;ion, that whatever theories men 
 may adopt concerning the development of the human 
 intelledl, any departures from the laws of mind, in 
 the natural processes of its growth, can only result in 
 irreparable injury and disappointment. 
 
 And now, the melancholy pleasure is allowed to 
 those who labored by his side so many years ago in 
 the interests of true education, to note on every hand 
 expressions of useless regrets that his wise counsels 
 were not permitted to prevail. 
 
 While Dr. Bronson's mental powers, both analyti- 
 cal and synthetical, were naturally of a high order, 
 they were largely increased by the incessant demands 
 made upon them ; their growth, under the general 
 law, being stimulated by those demands for work, and 
 by the performance of it. With a retentive memory 
 for fadls, he possessed in marked degree what is 
 known as the scientific mind, — and having been always 
 
 78
 
 a student of tlie physical sciences, lie was capable of 
 justly considering, from almost any point of view, the 
 physical problems that might be presented to it. The 
 steady equipoise with which he firmly held for judg- 
 ment the evenly balanced scales of argument, each 
 at times perhaps more weighty than the other, indi- 
 cated the highly judicial qualities of his mind — a 
 mind fortified by a comprehensive knowledge of the 
 principles of jurisprudence, as well as of statutory 
 law. So that, if he had not been the great physician 
 that he was, in the broadest sense of that term, it 
 naturally follows that he would have chosen the legal 
 profession, and would have become a great constitu- 
 tional lawyer, — or one of the distinguished jurists of 
 our land, — and could have worn with adequate dignity 
 and grace the honors of its highest judicial position. 
 
 In view of his great natural endowments, and of 
 his remarkable acquisitions in learning, such a pre- 
 didlion might safely have been foreshadowed in the 
 masterful manner in which he used the English lan- 
 guage, (and he was not ignorant of foreign tongues) 
 — in the critical choice of words, — in the judgment 
 and good taste shown in the formation of his sen- 
 tences, — in the strategical skill with which his argu- 
 ments were construdled and applied, — and lastly, in 
 the convincing power of his rhetoric, and the accu- 
 mulating force of his language, increased by the very
 
 deliberate manner of his utterance, — all combining to 
 compel, as it were, his auditors to adopt as their own 
 the conclusions previously reached through the logi- 
 cal deductions of his own mind. 
 
 It is almost half a century since the day I was first 
 made known to him, and I remember the occasion as 
 one never to be forgotten ; for during all this long 
 period of close and almost daily intercourse, there 
 was never even the shadow of a cloud between us. 
 It was a period of confiding and unbroken friendship 
 which was to me most delightful and profitable. 
 
 Honest, natural and simple in his character and 
 tastes, — sincere in every manifestation, — unreserved 
 in all declarations of his opinions if he uttered them 
 at all, — loyal to every known duty or obligation, his 
 simple word could not be strengthened by his bond. 
 
 His business transa6lions were condudled with 
 exadlness of accounting, and upon a basis of strictest 
 integrity ; while he would retain nothing that could 
 be rightfully claimed by another. 
 
 Respedled and admired by his own profession, he 
 enjoyed in an unusual degree the public esteem and 
 confidence. 
 
 Like other men of wealth who have suffered in 
 the estimation of the public whom they did not take
 
 into their confidence in the management of their 
 affairs, and whose right hand has not been permitted 
 to know what was done by his left hand — who pre- 
 ferred in other words to keep his private affairs from 
 the public knowledge, Dr. Bronson was regarded by 
 some who did not know him well as being parsimo- 
 nious. 
 
 In my judgment of his character nothing could well 
 be farther from the truth. He knew the value of 
 money ; he also knew the average qualities of men. 
 Moreover, he was not ignorant of the injuries so often 
 sustained by communities and individuals, through 
 thoughtless benefactions for obje6ls which were either 
 not then needed, or which communities and individ- 
 uals could well enough provide for themselves. With 
 his right hand he gave to Yale College eighty-six 
 thousand dollars toward founding a professorship of 
 Comparative Anatomy and Physiology — to the New 
 Haven Hospital he gave twenty thousand dollars, and 
 to the Hospital at Waterbury he gave ten thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 But with his left hand he privately distributed 
 annually thousands of dollars among needy people 
 more or less, or not at all related to him ; and the 
 continuance of these pensions and legacies remains a 
 verbal charge upon his estate, and is voluntarily 
 assumed by his heirs. Mortgages upon property of
 
 otlier needy friends upon which he had for j^ears paid 
 the interest are no longer to be found. In other cases, 
 permanent repairs to homesteads were ordered, no one 
 knew by whom. And in still other directions the 
 landscape has been made to blossom, under the ben- 
 eficent guidance of his bounteous left hand^ and many 
 grateful hearts have been made glad. 
 
 :j: * Hi * * * 
 
 In presenting to the public, and to such members 
 of the medical profession as may see them, these 
 sketches of Dr. Bronson, and his letters written at 
 Montreal to the Albany Committee in 1832 upon the 
 subjedl of the epidemic of Asiatic cholera then 
 prevalent in Canada, it is deemed unnecessary to call 
 attention to the great advances which have been 
 made in every department of medical science since 
 they were written — more than sixty j^ears ago — 
 particularly in ba6leriology, which at that time had 
 no existence, but also, and mainly, in pathology and 
 therapeutics, with both of which branches of study 
 Dr. Bronson was, during the years of his a(5live life, 
 constantly occupied. 
 
 Those also, who were by many years his juniors 
 in the profession, may be interested to know that, 
 although not a microscopist, he was an appreciative 
 student of whatever has been published on bacteri- 
 ology in late years, since 1849 5 — ^-^^ slow going as
 
 lie always was, and admitting with reludlance what- 
 ever was doubtful, and requiring demonstrative 
 proof whenever that was possible, he yet looked 
 hopefully forward to microscopical research as offer- 
 ing possibly a future field of discovery as to the 
 causes of several epidemic diseases, the most promi- 
 nent of which were typhoid fever and Asiatic cholera. 
 
 During that and the years immediately following, 
 the questions as to the origin and nature of these two 
 diseases were very often discussed in our medical 
 meetings ; and there were not wanting those who 
 fancied they saw a conne6lion between them, and it 
 was only by a process of exclusion that the question 
 was finally narrowed down to the very indefinite and 
 unsatisfactory conclusion that the causes of these two 
 infecftious and contagious diseases were in their 
 nature tellural. It was during these discussions that 
 I first heard of " fever germs of definite forms float- 
 ing in the atmosphere." 
 
 For the better understanding of what I am about 
 to mention, and as illustrative of some of the rarer 
 qualities of his mental constitution, it may be said 
 that, in the discussions of unsettled questions, partic- 
 ularly such as related to the medical sciences, it was 
 always Dr. Bronson's preference to be for the time 
 associated with some friend holding opinions in diredl
 
 opposition to his own — with some one for whose 
 qualities of mind and heart he could entertain the 
 highest respedl and esteem. With such a contestant 
 he delighted to study, even for many weeks, any 
 questions of common interest. 
 
 Any presentation therefore of the historical rela- 
 tions of Dr. Bronson to the invasion of our hemi- 
 sphere by Asiatic cholera in 1832, would be incom- 
 plete which did not include within its scope some 
 notice of his intimate personal friend, and zealous 
 colleague in after years, Charles Hooker — born 1799 
 — Yale, 1820 — M.D. 1823, ^^^ professor of Anatomy 
 and Physiology from 1838 until his decease in 1863. 
 Living for many years near each other in the same 
 street, these men of congenial minds, but dissimilar 
 tastes and habits of thought, became intimate and 
 inseparable friends. With daily opportunities for 
 the interchange of thoughts, they formed an element 
 of great strength and commanding influence in our 
 small professional community, while each of them 
 enjoyed the affedlionate personal regard of the entire 
 body. 
 
 In the year 1865, Professor Bronson read before 
 the Connedlicut Medical Society, an exceedingly 
 interesting sketch of his deceased friend Charles 
 Hooker, from which I quote his language describing 
 the experiences of the latter in the treatment of 
 cholera in the epidemic of 1832, as most valuable and 
 
 84
 
 instriidlive in themselves, and quite germane to the 
 historical character of this paper ; but more especially 
 because of the clear refle6led light, which at this 
 great distance of time they cast upon the modern 
 germ theory of disease, as now enunciated and 
 taught by the foremost bacteriologists of our time — 
 but which, it may still be said, are held stcbjudice by 
 many of the best educated medical men. 
 
 Since the death of Dr. Hooker, favorable opinions 
 have been often and freely expressed, regarding the 
 advanced views held by him as to the causation and a 
 more philosophical treatment of a number of important 
 diseases, then but imperfectly understood ; but 
 strengthened as these views were by the logical 
 reasoning of his friend Bronson, they became, and 
 still remain the settled therapeutic theories of some 
 of our best praAitioners. In the course of his 
 remarks, Dr. Bronson said of him : " Though some 
 physicians, as was to have been expelled, were accus- 
 tomed to smile at the persistency with which he 
 urged his peculiar views and methods of treatment, 
 they were very favorably received, and generally 
 adopted, particularly by the younger members of the 
 profession. His chosen remedies and favorite modes 
 of management are now (1865) in common use in 
 this sedion of the State. Perhaps his opinions modi- 
 fied the practice which prevails to-day, more than 
 those of any man who has lately lived among us." 
 
 8s
 
 In this cautiously expressed opinion, I am confi- 
 dent that most, if not all of the living contemporaries 
 of Dr. Charles Hooker in that day, would have 
 heartily concurred. 
 
 What is, however, of greater historical interest to 
 us in this connection, is the relations which Hooker 
 sustained to the first invasion of cholera among us, 
 and his published report of its course and treatment 
 in this city. Of these Dr. Bronson adds : " In the 
 summer of 1832, that scourge of the East, the 
 epidemic cholera, made its first appearance in New 
 Haven. Do6lor Hooker took a deep interest in the 
 treatment of the new disease, and published an 
 account of his experience (with it) in the Boston 
 Medical and Surgical Journal for July 24th, 1833. 
 The first twelve cases which came under his notice 
 were treated with opium, calomel in frequent small 
 doses, stimulants, irritants and external heat, — the 
 common practice ; six recovered and six died. The 
 next twenty-one cases were managed in a different 
 way. Calomel was given in large and frequent doses, 
 commencing with twenty, forty or sixty grains. 
 Subsequently, from eight to twenty grains were 
 administered every hour, or at longer intervals, 
 according to the severity of the symptoms. 
 
 At the same time, small and frequent doses of 
 tincture of camphor and pieces of ice were ordered, 
 and heat and irritants applied externally. But 
 
 86
 
 calomel, (given in dry powder and followed by a 
 teaspoonful of cold water,) was tlie sHeet anchor. 
 One patient took two hundred and sixteen grains in 
 thirty-six hours with the best results. Of the twenty- 
 one cases managed in this way nineteen recovered. 
 The large doses of calomel, instead of producing a 
 cathartic effe(5l, allayed vomiting and purging, and 
 completely suspended peristaltic action, as proved by 
 the application of the ear to the abdomen. 
 
 If in six or eight hours intestinal motion was not 
 resumed, mild laxatives were employed." 
 
 Before quoting further from Dr. Bronson's interest- 
 ing biographical sketch of his friend Hooker, which 
 deserves to have had a far wider circulation than it 
 has yet met with among the profession of our own 
 country, no apology need be offered for resuming 
 here the history of the cholera epidemic of 1849, ^^ 
 which Dr. Bronson was personally cognizant. 
 
 Speaking now, however, from my own limited 
 experience as one of the younger physicians, I may 
 state that the sickness of that year which occupied 
 their attention very early in the spring, and was 
 almost universally prevalent, was an unmanageable 
 form of dysentery, attended from the first with 
 marked typhoid symptoms, rapidly proving fatal in 
 many instances, and being quickly merged into a 
 fully developed epidemic of cholera. 
 
 87
 
 In the retrospective opinions of many physicians, 
 the fatal sickness of the year was considered to have 
 been a strange intermingling of typhoid fever, d3'sen- 
 tery and Asiatic cholera, from the beginning. 
 
 With the exception of Professor Hooker and two or 
 three others, all the physicians of the city who had 
 cholera patients treated them in the manner already 
 described, with opium in repeated doses, and small 
 doses of calomel. If any of these cases recovered, 
 they must have been very few, for at this distance 
 of time I am unable to recall any recoveries among 
 them. 
 
 The cholera visited us again, with increasing 
 mortalit}^ in the years 1854 and 1855. It was 
 managed as heretofore in various wa3's, and with 
 similar results. Dr. Hooker's treatment, modified 
 by himself now, to the administration of a single dose 
 of sixty grains of dry calomel, followed by a teaspoon- 
 ful of water, w^as adopted by many more physicians 
 in the city and throughout the state, and was almost 
 without an exception successful. It was relied upon 
 with great confidence by those who used it, empyrical 
 as it most certainly was. Speculating in later days 
 as to the true significance of the phenomena which 
 occurred under our own critical observ^ation, but 
 without the powder of analysis, we could only sa}^, it 
 was simply nature's method of announcing, in her
 
 own unmistakable language, a half discovered scien- 
 tific truth of the greatest magnitude and importance. 
 
 If only there had been among us at that time, I 
 hear some one saying, a mind fitted for the elucida- 
 tion of all the hidden problems of nature, — trained in 
 the modem methods of scientific research, what 
 wonderful results might have been at once realized ! 
 Not so. 
 
 The conditions necessary for the perfecting of such 
 a scientific discovery as many may now think the 
 facts observed plainly led up to, did not then exist. 
 A new and unknown contagious and infe6lious dis- 
 ease, that appears upon the continent only at rare 
 and uncertain intervals, leaving death and destru6lion 
 in its path, disappearing when its work is ended, as 
 suddenly as it came, offers few opportunities for its 
 continued and philosophical investigation. 
 
 Life is too short, — and the successive generations 
 of mankind are not long enough for the study and 
 solution of all the mysteries of Nature. 
 
 The established fa6l of recent years, that the 
 mercurial chloride is probably the most effedlive, and 
 certainly the safest germicide known, had of course 
 not been recognized by ba6leriologists half a century 
 ago, for as yet there were none, — but the wonderful 
 success of the purely empyrical treatment of Asiatic 
 cholera with a single large dose of this mercurial, 
 better known as calomel, served as the text and basis
 
 for numerous discussions by our two friends, while 
 they both lived, as to what was the true philosophy of 
 the infinitely great results of so simple a mode of 
 procedure. 
 
 From the earliest records of popular beliefs, down 
 to the present hour, it has been assumed by mankind, 
 and advocated with a degree of obstinate persistence 
 equalled only by the intellectual darkness which 
 prevailed, that all foul smelling odors which could 
 scarcely be inhaled without danger of suffocation, 
 were thereby valuable as potent disinfectants of dis- 
 ease. Amulets and charms of disgusting forms and 
 materials were relied upon for protection against the 
 infection of disease. A chemical combination of an 
 irrespirable gas, chlorine, with lime, used extensively 
 in the arts, has been supposed, because of its power- 
 fully nauseous odor, to be not only a deodorizer, 
 overcoming all other smells, but as being able by 
 virtue of its irrespirable odor to destroy the infectious 
 nature of a communicable contagious disease. So it 
 has come about that, by mistaking the use of lan- 
 guage and the proper definition of words, the chloride 
 of lime has acquired, through its power to mask 
 odors, a false reputation as a destroyer of the infec- 
 tion of disease. 
 
 Does not every enlightened student of nature know 
 that the only real disinfectants are cleanliness and 
 
 go
 
 ventilation, or the destruction by fire of all fomites ? 
 And should a molecule of infectious material escape 
 from confinement, that it is caught up by a freely 
 moving atmosphere, and combining with equivalents 
 of oxygen or other neutralizing elements of the air, 
 enters into new combinations with the atmospheric 
 constituents, and becomes, instead of a menace to 
 human health and life, a natural stimulus to every 
 form of vegetable and animal perfection ? 
 
 Although a quarter of a century has passed since 
 the inaugural address by Doctor Bronson, as President 
 of the Connecticut Medical Society, was made, cir- 
 cumstances indicate that it can be profitably read by 
 the present generation. 
 
 SCIENCK AS A HELPKR ; INHKRITANCK AS A HINDRANCE; ; 
 DEATH AS A CONSERVATOR. 
 
 The Annual Address delivered before the Convention, May 25th, 1870, 
 
 By the President of the Society, 
 
 HENRY BRONSON, M.D. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen, Members of the Medical Society : 
 
 Medicine as a Science, or scientific medicine, has been 
 steadily, or with slight interruptions, improving since the 
 dawn of civilization, and during the present century has made 
 rapid progress. Facts from many departments of inquiry have 
 been collected and classified, nature has been interrogated by 
 experiment, laws have been ascertained and principles settled. 
 Hundreds or thousands of enthusiastic, tireless workers of 
 every age and in different countries have devoted their strength
 
 and lives to the stud}-. Whatever energy, patience and talent, 
 aided by the best methods and fittest appliances, could accom- 
 plish, has been done. 
 
 Anatomy is a branch of medical science which has been 
 prosecuted with complete success, and so far as it relates to the 
 human subject little remains to be known. In the interesting 
 department of Comparative Anatomy, however, without a 
 knowledge of which the human form has little significance, 
 there is yet work enough — enough certainly for the genera- 
 tions of this century and the next. In Microscopical Anatomy, 
 which seeks to know the minute structure of organisms, won- 
 derful conquests have been made, but still greater marv-els may 
 yet be disclosed. It is not easy to assign limits to that which 
 human persistence, skillful manipulation and improved instru- 
 ments may accomplish in this particular field of inquiry. Nor 
 has Physiolog}', the science of normal living actions, withheld 
 its contributions to scientific medicine. Almost within my own 
 memory, it has come out of the nebulous state, and from an 
 unpropitious beginning has already taken a high rank. Con- 
 sidered in its wider meaning and embracing Comparative 
 Physiology, it is at this moment one of the most pregnant and 
 hopeful of the sciences, giving or promising important aid in 
 the solution of difiicult problems. Of Botany, another of the 
 so-called collateral sciences, embracing within its scope plants 
 of priceless value in prescription, I need only speak as the 
 chosen pursuit of man^- zealous and competent men whose 
 labors have been crowned with distinguished success. 
 
 Pre-eminent among the medical sciences stands Chemistry. 
 It has been cultivated with unintermitting assiduitj-, and a 
 courage that has never faltered. The highest order of genius 
 has been devoted to it, and extraordinarj- results have been 
 obtained. It has contributed largely to scientific medicine, 
 and imposed on the profession obligations which can neither 
 be forgotten or discharged. Its power and utilit}^ have been 
 displayed in the analysis of drugs, the isolation of their active 
 principles, and the modification and improvement of the latter 
 by combination. The discovery of the remarkable class of
 
 substances known as the alkaloids, of which that impatient 
 and revolutionary agent, nitrogen, is the characteristic ingre- 
 dient, is due to the chemists. A large proportion of our active 
 remedies are now chemicals, the products of the laboratory. 
 The copiousness and variety of our Materia Medica as compared 
 with that of our fathers must be ascribed to our friends of the 
 retort and test-tube. 
 
 Nor has chemistry been content with these outer, material 
 conquests. Adventurous, confident, sometimes audacious, it 
 has essayed to explain the mysteries of the inner, organic 
 world. Denying the existence of a distinctive vital principle ; 
 assuming the living form to be composed of chemical materi- 
 als, built up, endowed and preserved by simple chemical force, 
 and finally destroyed by chemical action, it has attempted to 
 trace the steps and explain the cause of every movement. 
 Nor have its promises been without a show of performance. 
 In pursuance of a well-defined purpose, its cultivators have, 
 with unequaled diligence and a complete mastery of science, 
 sought to know the composition, phenomena and laws of 
 organized bodies. Remarkable results have followed. The 
 elementary constituents of organic matter have been exactly 
 determined. The atomic constitution of several of its simpler 
 compounds (those chiefly which are destitute of nitrogen and 
 incapable of life) such as starch, sugar, fat, gum, has been 
 clearly shown. By chemical agency, starch is easily converted 
 into sugar, and urea and several other organic bodies formed 
 from inorganic materials. That the difficult questions presented 
 might be satisfactorily answered, all the substances, solids, 
 fluids and gases, which are taken into the system as supplies, 
 or which escape from it as detritus or refuse, have been ana- 
 lyzed and weighed, while the several changes wrought during 
 the transit have been carefully noted. According to the liberal 
 estimate of Professor Draper, a man of ordinary size receives 
 annually, say, eight hundred pounds, avoirdupois, of dry food, 
 eight hundred pounds of oxygen, and fifteen hundred pounds 
 of water, in all more than a ton and a half ; and if his weight 
 be stationarj^, loses by the alimentary canal, kidneys, skin and
 
 lungs, in the form of non-assimilated matters, urea, carbonic 
 acid and water, an equal amount. Every element taken from 
 the world outside is restored to it. The organism can re- 
 arrange atoms or molecules, decompose, recompose and reha- 
 bilitate compound bodies, but create nothing, destroy nothing. 
 Note the facts. 
 
 A plant lives on inorganic matter — water, carbonic acid and 
 ammonia chiefl}- — heat and light furnishing the extraneous 
 force required. An animal receives into its body organic, 
 highly elaborated, nutritive substances — substances surcharged 
 with chemical force loosely combined and easily appropriated — 
 converts them first into plastic material, then into living tissue, 
 and lastly into lifeless, inorganic matter which, spent of its use- 
 ful qualities, is cast off. By the last conversion, or during the 
 descent from the organic to the inorganic state, a vast amount 
 of "stored up force" is, as in the case of a falling body, liber- 
 ated, metamorphosed and utilized. This, like that generated 
 by the gravitating clock- weight or a bent spring, is employed 
 to work the machinery of life. The force thus used manifests 
 itself as muscular, or digestive, or hepatic, or nervous force, 
 etc., or as heat, sensation, emotion, etc. How this change 
 happens — how chemical affinity becomes vital power — we 
 know not. Nor do we know how this same affinity is converted 
 into heat and light by combustion, or into electricity bj' the 
 galvanic apparatus. We understand, however, some of the 
 conditions which are necessar>\ That oxj'gen plays an im- 
 portant part in all these processes is apparent. Oxygen is a 
 powerful chemical agent, and the great instrument of change in 
 the natural world, pulling down the forms which other agencies 
 build up. It is taken into the system in enormous quantitj', 
 in weight equal to the dry food received, and diffused through- 
 out all the tissues. The effect of a substance so energetic, let 
 loose in such abundance among the reeking, unstable com- 
 pounds of the body, must be in a high degree subversive in its 
 action, unless controlled by vital power. Thus controlled — 
 put in harness, as it were — it becomes not only an efficient 
 worker, but an obedient, humble servant. Always at hand, it
 
 in some way, by permission, unites with the carbon contained 
 in the food, the carbonic acid which appears in the expired 
 air furnishing proof of the union. By this combination, 
 heat, or its probable equivalent in other forces, is constantly 
 evolved. The heat increases mobility, facilitates change and 
 keeps the body warm ; the other forces are mechanical and 
 vital — muscular, digestive, cerebral, etc. ' ' Whatever amount 
 ot power an organism expends in any shape is the correlate and 
 equivalent of a power that was taken into it from without." 
 [See Spencer's Principles of Biology.] It is contended that the 
 carbon consumed undergoes a true combustion. The whole 
 of the " stored up " force disengaged is just equal to that 
 which is given out when an equal amount of carbon is 
 "burned," whether within or without the body. According 
 to the theory, this combustive process disintegrates and 
 destroys portions of vital substance, solid or fluid ; organic 
 matter runs down : parts die and are rejected that the remain- 
 ing whole may live. The explanation is ingenious and plaus- 
 ible in a high degree. 
 
 The vital structure is an apparatus so contrived and equipped 
 as to convert inorganic or dead organic into living matter, 
 physical into vital force. It effects this by means of an inher- 
 ent, special endowment. This endowment is a force, sui 
 generis, wholly distinct from those which govern inanimate 
 matter — correlated with them if you please, but as distinct 
 from them as they are from each other. Of its primal source 
 we are wholly ignorant ; but that it made its appearance subse- 
 quently to the material forces, geological facts well nigh 
 prove. Unlike the latter, it is not necessary to the existence of 
 matter. As we know it, this force always has its beginning in 
 a pre-existing organism, but whether or not a creative act 
 introduced it in the first instance, science does not inform us. 
 In our experience, it is associated exclusively with an organ- 
 ized system, in connection with which it multiplies, develops 
 and perpetuates itself. No known arrangement of material 
 agencies, no artificial combination of appliances, has yet been 
 able to evoke it ; at least, this is my belief. A living organ-
 
 ism must be provided before the first or initial step can be 
 taken. Generation does not originate but onl)^ continues 
 existence. Chemistry has wrought marvels, but up to this 
 time has not endowed with life a single particle of matter. I 
 may be mistaken, but these are my convictions after having 
 examined the facts. I do not claim that ' ' spontaneous gene- 
 ration," so called, is impossible, but that it has not been 
 proved. 
 
 To say that vital force is nothing more than chemical force 
 slightly disguised, as those chemists whose minds have been 
 too exclusively occupied by their own science often do, is with- 
 out warrant, and an abuse of language. With as much pro- 
 priety might it be claimed that the force expended in the 
 formation of a crystal is vital force. The two are easily dis- 
 tinguished. Each has its appointed sphere, and acts in its own 
 way ; each produces compounds and phenomena and groupings 
 of the latter which are peculiar and specific. Nor do they exer- 
 cise a divided sway. In its own proper field of action, each 
 rules supreme so long as it rules at all. In the cases in which 
 one disappears, and the other is installed in its place, there is 
 no union or blending, but a true metamorphosis and conversion. 
 Why overlook all these and many other proofs of a diverse 
 nature ? Why contend that one does the work of both, or 
 that the other has no existence ? The proficient in chemistry 
 will not permit the physiologist to enter his laboratory, and to 
 insist without protest that the force which there rules is not 
 chemical, but vital — that the chemical principle, so-called, is a 
 myth, or plan's a secondar}^ and subordinate part in every case, 
 and that vitalit}^ acting under new conditions is the true cause 
 of every phenomenon. Chemists who are jealous of their own 
 rights should not claim for themselves what they are unwilling 
 to yield to others. 
 
 Though the collateral sciences have sometimes suffered from 
 misdirected labor, it cannot be denied that they have reared 
 vast and solid structures of natural truth. In the matter of 
 work, they have done their part, but has practical medicine 
 been profited to the extent expected ? Has the latter, as a 
 
 96
 
 general rule, been able to appropriate and utilize the important 
 facts which have been placed within its reach ? With all our 
 new acquisitions, can we prolong life, cut short disease, or 
 restore health with any certainty ? Are our methods of cure 
 as much superior to those of our fathers as our science is more 
 complete ? Has the healing art kept pace with the other arts 
 which owe their advanced position to modern discovery ? To 
 all these questions — I say it with sorrow, not with shame — a 
 negative answer must be returned. Too often have we been 
 unable to make our greater knowledge contribute in any con- 
 siderable degree to our resources, or indeed to connect it with 
 the ends for which we labor. Hence there is often a broad gulf 
 between our science and our practice. Anatomj^ Physiology, 
 Microscopy, Chemistry, etc., do not qualify us to foretell with- 
 out error the course of events in the interior of the system, 
 especially when the natural actions have been suspended or 
 perverted by disease. Not knowing what events may turn up, 
 we can make no adequade provision against impending dan- 
 gers. Often they come upon us suddenly and unexpectedly 
 when no preparation was possible. The thick darkness which 
 hangs over the future of us all, no mortal eye, no human 
 sagacity, has 3^et penetrated. Sometimes a man drops dead in 
 the street when no one knew he was ill, and when the scalpel 
 makes no important disclosure. Another sinks rapidly from a 
 slight injury or surgical operation, or other seemingly insuf- 
 ficient cause. These accidents, so-called, or special provi- 
 dences, as many suppose, do not occur in the inorganic world. 
 The physicist often knows as much of the future as the past. 
 Foreseeing what will happen, he can anticipate and forestall 
 events. The chemist will tell you distinctly how a familiar 
 substance will behave when submitted to experiment — carbon- 
 ate of lime for instance, when placed in dilute sulphuric acid. 
 Consequently, he can provide without accident for whatever 
 may come. Taking a bold stand, he can not only predict con- 
 fidently, but bring prophecy to pass. 
 
 It is otherwise with the physician. He hesitates, and if he 
 is wise speaks cautiously, trembling for results. However well
 
 he may know a family of children, he cannot tell how they 
 will be affected by exposure to scarlet fever, what course the 
 disease will take, how opium, calomel or capsicum may influ- 
 ence its progress, or what the sequels may be in each case. 
 The same remedy, given apparently under the same circum- 
 stances, will not always produce the same effects. Embar- 
 rassed with doubt, he cannot prescribe without anxiet)' for 
 severe sickness, not knowing what a da)' or an hour may bring 
 forth. If prudent, he temporizes and palliates till the sk^' 
 clears up ; waits for developments, watches symptoms and 
 proceeds warily, feeling that his feet are on slippery ground. 
 If he give medicine, his efforts are at first tentative. It is not 
 till the disease assumes a regular type — till life returns to 
 familiar channels, and the end can be seen — that his step 
 becomes assured. Suppose in a critical case he pursue a 
 bolder course, and attempt to arrest morbid action by strong 
 practice. Whilst he waits with painful solicitude for suitable 
 effects, straining his eyes to catch the faintest glimpse of a 
 coming change, he cannot but notice that events come and go 
 at their own sweet will, or are guided by a hand stronger than 
 his. Diml)' discerned behind the curtain, there sits a dreaded, 
 unrelenting, mysterious power which resists his efforts and 
 thwarts his aims. Against such odds, is it strange that the 
 physician gives up the contest, or seeks refuge in what is 
 termed the expectant method — a method which follows hope- 
 fully and submissively instead of taking the lead and cleaving 
 a way for escape ? It is certain that the practitioner can 
 sometimes best serve the sick by curbing his impatience, and 
 declining to interfere. Pursuing this course, he gives his atten- 
 tion to minor points, and waits for new revelations, trusting 
 for safety to movements which he does not comprehend, and 
 which he can neither initiate or delay. I know not a more 
 painful situation, or one better calculated to humble a proud, 
 self-suflBcient man than that of the trusted medical adviser 
 who, comprehending the danger, is obliged to sit by the 
 bedside of sickness, the observed of all, without lifting a 
 finger. 
 
 98
 
 The limited influence of our art — its complete subordina- 
 tion to a higher law — is well illustrated by the uniformity 
 which characterizes sickness and death. Not only do all men 
 die, but each dies of some particular disease which we are 
 taught to resist, and which the world thinks we ought to cure. 
 The causes of mortalit}^ act with so much regularity that the 
 rate of the latter may be precisely known. On the fact that 
 out of a thousand persons of a given age, a certain number 
 will die annually, in spite of the healing art, the system of 
 life insurance is founded. That the risk may be accurately 
 computed is proved by the practice of business men who issue 
 life-policies at fixed prices, staking their dollars on the result. 
 They do not find their calculations overturned by supposed 
 improvements in medicine. Or, if we take a particular disease 
 indigenous to a country, the deaths from it will be found to 
 bear a nearly uniform ratio to the deaths from all diseases. For 
 consumption, this ratio in Connecticut is about one to six and 
 a third. But the death rate among a people does not seem to 
 be dependent on any of the usual forms of sickness. Were 
 phthisis, typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera infantum, etc., to 
 become wholly extincft, I suppose that new disorders equally 
 destructive to the same classes as nearly the same age would 
 be introduced. A sweeping epidemic which proves fatal to 
 large numbers is usually followed by unwonted health. It 
 weeds out the vitally infirm, killing off those who would 
 soon have perished from other causes. The decreased mor- 
 tality which is the immediate result makes up for the previous 
 increase, leaving the rate for the whole period unaflfedled. 
 
 It cannot be said that our insufi&ciency as physicians and 
 frequent defeat are due to any lack of ability, or courage, or 
 persistence in the profession. We have had in our ranks our 
 full proportion of eminent men — men of profound judgment 
 and gifted intelledl. Trained to their vocation, they are keen 
 observers and cautious reasoners. No class of workers has 
 surpassed them in industry, zeal and self-sacrifice. The phe- 
 nomena of disease, its origin, history, charadleristics, compli- 
 cations and results have been studied with determined resolu-
 
 tion. Remedies have been sought the world over, and their 
 properties and effe(5ls carefully examined ; while skillful 
 therapeutists have spent their lives in the endeavor to apply 
 them to pradlice. Facts, so-called, have been accumulated in 
 bewildering profusion, and books written nearly enough to 
 freight a planet. 
 
 All these things well considered lead to the conclusion that 
 a wrong estimate has been put upon the difficulties of our art. 
 These difficulties are extraordinary in kind and degree, and 
 wholl}^ different from those met with in the ph3^sical world. 
 For them and their invincible charadler, our profession is ,not 
 responsible. The nature of the obstacles which confront us at 
 every step not onl}^ account for our short-comings, bnt vindi- 
 cate us fully. Though often overmatched, considering the 
 heavy load which has been placed upon us, we need not be 
 ashamed. This conceded, let us no longer foster delusion, 
 hoping for the impossible, but endeavor to ascertain what are 
 the hindrances to the healing art — what their nature — what 
 their causes and extent ? What are the limits of our power to 
 cure, and why are we thus limited ? What is the law which 
 interposes when more is attempted than can be accomplished ? 
 I may not be able to reply to all these questions, but I can 
 answer some, and give reasons, perhaps, for not answering 
 others. 
 
 Leaving out of the account some of the simplest organisms, 
 animal life in the individual begins with the fertilized ovum, 
 or rather with the primitive or embryo-cell which the latter 
 incloses. This cell, the producft of two other cells called 
 sexual, at first a mere speck of semi-fluid, albuminous matter, 
 without discernable structure, has at the start but a single 
 facult}', that of drawing to itself and appropriating nutritive 
 matter, and the force required for transmutation, etc. Bj'- 
 means of additions thus made, it contrives to gain in size and 
 strength, or to grow. Simultaneously with this increase, and 
 keeping pace with it, there is differentiation, the parts becom- 
 ing unlike. To the eye, the first change is indicated bj" the 
 "segmentation of the yolk." Then comes the "mulberry
 
 mass," then the " blastodermic membrane," then the "primi- 
 tive trace," then the dim outline of central organs, and so on, 
 the process up to a certain point being the same in all animals. 
 The chara(5ters which distinguish the class, order, genus and 
 species appear in regular succession. Alwaj^s impelled by out- 
 side influences, the organism is forever in a state of transition, 
 passing from one stage to another. Originally simple in form, 
 homogeneous in strudlure, and indefinite in its chara(?ters, it 
 becomes daily or hourly more complex, more heterogeneous, 
 more definite. Out of the confusion formed by continuous 
 integration and transformation, the body of the young animal 
 at length emerges. Organs, fun(5lions and faculties are 
 unfolded and elaborated, one after another, till the work is 
 complete. This proceeding from the general to the special, 
 from a lower to a higher sphere, through successive differen- 
 tiations, is called Development or Evolution. This continues 
 till the prescribed limit of perfecftion has been reached, when a 
 retrograde movement, not over the line of advancement but 
 toward weakness and decay, commences. This downward 
 plunge does not seem to be caused, as the chemists suppose, by 
 the unresisted action of chemical forces. The end is reached 
 through differentiations as regular and distindtive as those 
 which marked the ascent, and wholly unlike anything which 
 unassisted chemistry can produce. The organism during the 
 whole period of its fall is adtive, not passive. Nor does the 
 body wear ovi\., as popular opinion supposes. If wear, so-called, 
 is to be measured by waste, then the greater it is the more 
 vigorous the fundtions, and vice versa. lyife, in its normal 
 state, is in truth strong and acftive in proportion to the expen- 
 diture, and to a large extent in consequence of it. Properly 
 speaking, there is no wear in the working of life's machinery, 
 and consequently no loss by attrition. The duration of indi- 
 vidual existence is determined by vital, not chemical or 
 mechanical laws. Immediately, if I mistake not, it depends 
 on the limitation which nature has imposed on the power of 
 cell-multiplication, by which repairs are e£fe(fted and the tissues 
 renovated. This power, renewed, rejuvenated and refreshed
 
 by the s^enerative adl, is always energetic till maturity is 
 reached, when, at the very point of greatest perfedlion, and 
 when decay seemed most remote, it begins to show weakness 
 which gradually increases till cell-genesis and the life which 
 depends on it becomes precarious and finally impossible. 
 
 That we may better understand the nature of development, 
 I will go back to the facfls which stand at the head of the 
 developmental series. However a species may have originated, 
 whether it began life as a single cell or as a more complex 
 structure, this primitive organism, once in existence, would be 
 adled on and modified — its equilibrium disturbed — by environ- 
 ing influences. Having, by the supposition, no hereditary 
 bias, and restricted only by intrinsic causes and its own essen- 
 tial nature, it would of necessity be impelled in the direction 
 given by these influences, or in the line, if you please, of least 
 resistance. These outer agencies — air, light, heat, moisture, 
 food, etc., adling singly or jointly, would cause new molecular 
 arrangements or inner change, and with change would come 
 differentiation, the first step of development. A slight change 
 in the environment (which is alwaj^s var\'ing) would cause 
 further change in the organism. Thus the second step would 
 be taken. Continued change would by the same rule produce 
 continued differentiation, ending, under the guidance of the 
 constructive principle, in complete development. In this 
 manner the living form is pressed forward, and at the same 
 time molded and fashioned bj^ external influences, its success- 
 ive conditions or history representing and refledling the latter. 
 I shall not follow up this idea ; but the efiecft of these reac- 
 tionary movements and the developmental changes which 
 follow is to bring life into greater harmony with the world 
 outside. This harmony — in progressive races more complete 
 in each succeeding generation — is made possible by the yield- 
 ing, obsequious charadter of the nascent organism. When the 
 latter becomes unyielding — rigid, say, from age — or when its 
 answering adlions are irregular and spasmodic, as in disease, 
 the power of adjustment is lost, harmon}' ceases, and death 
 must soon follow. This correspondence between the organs
 
 and fundtions and surrounding agents, so conspicuous in 
 nature, and so necessary to animal and vegetal existence, is 
 what is called adaptation. 
 
 But that which is most nearly related to my present purpose 
 is the fa(5l that modifications of strudlure, peculiarities of form, 
 and bodily qualities of whatever kind and however produced, 
 re-appear in the offspring. The first pair, having no inheri- 
 tance, would bequeath only their united personal organizations 
 as it existed at the time of conception. The second genera- 
 tion, commencing life with an hereditary bias, would transmit 
 this together with the modifications which personal causes had 
 produced. The third and subsequent generations would follow 
 the example of the second, each handing down whatever had 
 been received, with the alterations and additions which itself 
 had supplied. Thus an individual is in strudlure and fundlion 
 but the recapitulation of all that has gone before — an abridge- 
 ment of his ancestry and of himself, that is of his own history. 
 Uniformity in the environment adling upon successive genera- 
 tions would insure uniformity of organization, giving charac- 
 ters common to the race, and permanent in proportion to their 
 antiquity. During the long life of a species, embracing 
 hundreds or thousands of centuries, these chara(fters become, 
 as it were, immutable. On the other hand, variableness in the 
 outer world is the source of inconstancy in the inner. Incon- 
 stant chara(5ters are those which distinguish the varieties of a 
 species or sub-species. As a general rule they have a feeble 
 hold of the organism, have a recent origin, and are easily 
 efiaced. Fanciers take advantage of this fadl when they would 
 introduce a new breed. 
 
 Not only is the organization bequeathed, but the order of 
 events and the time occupied by each of the several series are 
 transmitted, the parental type being preserved. The family 
 pattern, whatever it may be, is faithfully copied, and all its 
 modifications successively adopted. In virtue of its inherited 
 endowment, the embryo-cell runs a definite career, definite in 
 its stages and duration, and definite in every one of its charac- 
 teristics. In each step of its progress it is under constraint —
 
 hemmed in by limits, and bound down by forms which it 
 cannot break over. Always starting from the same point, it is 
 driven forward helplessl)^ in the course marked out for it ; 
 undergoes all the changes and transformations peculiar to its 
 kind, and does not fail to arrive at the different stages ' ' on 
 time." An unseen influence guides it ; a law which no 
 scalpel or microscope or other appliance can reveal, presides 
 over it. External violence or internal defedts may cut short 
 its course, but no cause consistent with healthy movement can 
 materially change its direction or hinder its progress. Nor 
 can the order fixed by heritage be reversed. Maturity is 
 reached by innumerable successive differentiations, every one 
 of which is made possible by some preceding differentiation. 
 
 Strudlure carries wdth it fundlion, and all the qualities 
 which appertain to a living organism. If the former be inher- 
 ited, so are the latter. Each of the organs and faculties 
 exhibits the family likeness, follows in the footsteps of its 
 predecessors, and a<5ls as it has been accustomed to time out of 
 mind, without much reference to present ownership. In truth, 
 faculties are handed down entire and without a break from one 
 generation to another. Though intermitting in adlivity, as in 
 the sleeping and embr3^onic states, stridlly speaking they never 
 die. Appetites, propensities, instin(5ls, aptitudes, tendencies, 
 modes of thinking and habits of action, all live in the oflspring. 
 Not only are the prime fadts of individual life determined by 
 descent, but minor events, including those dependent proxi- 
 mately on the will, have to a large extent the same origin. 
 Travelers speak of certain wild birds which, allowing them- 
 selves to be approached till experience has taught the danger, 
 bear offspring which, untaught, fl}^ aw-ay alarmed at the sight 
 of man. According to the Westminster Review, referred to by 
 Dr. Elam, a dog taught to beg bore a puppy which, though 
 taken from its mother at six weeks, spontaneously took to 
 begging at the end of seven or eight months. One day it was 
 found before a rabbit hutch "begging" for the rabbits. The 
 playful ad;s of the kitten are not those of the mother w^hen 
 grown up, but of the mother in its kittenhood, this fadt 
 proving that they are not imitative but hereditary.
 
 In essential points, one's history is written in the embryo- 
 cell from which he springs. There will be found the causes of 
 the good and evil which attend him. There are planted the 
 seeds of disease and decay. If health and long life await him, 
 there will be found the reason for them. If the embryo-form 
 be imperfect or poorly endowed, a sickly life and early death 
 may be expected. In no event can the stream be purer than 
 the fountain. I do not mean to say that a man's personal 
 environment and his own spontaneity can have no e£fec?t on his 
 destiny, but that he starts with specific tendencies, a bias, a 
 pressure in the rear which will usually control the result. If 
 he begins life with broken machinery or a constitution funda- 
 mentally imperfect, the defecfts can never be repaired. In a 
 case of this kind, development may be arrested at any time, 
 slight accidents will produce extraordinary eflFe(5ts, certain 
 functions will be discharged with difficulty, and fatal disease 
 will appear prematurely, perhaps suddenly. Complaints which 
 are not commonly hazardous, like measles, whooping cough, 
 mumps, etc., may prove mortal. If there be a particular family 
 taint or tendency, tuberculous, cancerous, rheumatic, anthritic, 
 maniacal, epileptic, apopledlic, calculous, etc., the appropriate 
 symptoms will probably show themselves in due time, and at 
 about the same age as in the parent.* Sometimes all the issue 
 of the same pair will be cut off in infancy by hydrocephalus 
 or convulsions, or soon after puberty by consumption. 
 
 * For the unwelcome ills which come upon us, we are prone to look 
 exclusively to outside influences — heat, cold, dampness, changes in the 
 weather, errors of diet, poisons in the air, or in our food and drink, etc., 
 and to forget the causes which are wrapped up in our own bodies. 
 Because a chill or sense of chilliness marks the access of a large propor- 
 tion of the maladies which afflicS; humanity, the mistaken masses and 
 some poor phj-sicians suppose that clean, cool, fresh air is the great enemy 
 of the race, and that "colds," so-called, lay the foundations for most of 
 our diseases. It is well to provide, as in most cases we may, for the 
 substantial dangers which surround us, but not wise to mistake for them 
 those ever-present evils which are connected with a crippled organization 
 —evils which are congenital and hereditary, against which no adequate 
 provision can be made.
 
 Now here lie the difficulties which beset the physician. 
 Nearly all the diseases he is called on to treat are, more or less, 
 openly or otherwise, hereditary. Even those which are appar- 
 ently due to personal causes owe their peculiar charadteristics 
 and perverseness to parentage. Death itself is a heritage. 
 Not only that, but the time of its occurrence is fixed approxi- 
 mately by descent. With the most perfedt organization, and 
 under the most favorable circumstances, a man loses his vigor 
 at a certain age, grows more and more feeble, and dies when 
 his original stock of vitality is exhausted. To appearance he 
 is destroyed by some familiar complaint, but really by a cause 
 which lies far deeper — a cause which has its roots in the 
 remote past. He has run the career of his race ; has reached 
 the ancestral limit, and escapes by the avenue which is most 
 convenient or accessible. If that had been closed, another 
 would have been found. The particular disease is but the 
 transient form which the departing life assumes, and to expedt 
 to cure it, however mild it may at first appear, is not reason- 
 able. Medicine in such cases may not be useless, but strong 
 drugs are out of place. Other disorders occurring in early or 
 middle life, and due to hereditary faults, are often to be 
 regarded more as evidence that our 5'ears have been numbered 
 and will ere long expire, than as temporarj' perturbations to be 
 removed. In these instances, were it possible in appearance 
 to restore health, our patients would soon die of other and 
 per\^erser maladies, and we might lose the credit won in pre- 
 vious illnesses. There are ph5'-sicians in pradlice who, if their 
 word must be taken, "never lost a case when called in 
 season." They are knaves and quacks, and deserve our con- 
 tempt as deceivers, no matter what their diplomas ma}' say in 
 Latin. All our patients, however adroitly managed, will die 
 sooner or later, either under our treatment or that of others 
 perhaps equally skillful. If given to vaunting, we may 
 promise to cure every disease but the last. Further than this 
 we cannot safely go ; more than this our friends cannot reas- 
 onably ask. As our power to heal is limited, so is our power 
 to slay. Men sick before their time will usually get well 
 under almost any treatment, the worst included.
 
 In one point of view, it may be considered fortunate that we 
 know no more of the real significance of our infirmities — no 
 more of the prescribed length of our days, and the connedlion 
 which impending diseases have with our final doom. Perfedl 
 knowledge might extinguish hope so necessary to our comfort, 
 discourage proper effort, and give rise to self- destroying 
 despair. Much can be done by suitable medication to remove 
 irritation, assuage pain, encourage sleep, and promote the gen- 
 eral good, even when recovery is impossible. In all these 
 cases, an intelligent, truthful physician is needed in the sick- 
 room — needed to keep imposters out, if for nothing else. 
 
 Purposely in my preceding remarks have I omitted to notice 
 certain apparent irregularities in the law of descent. Those 
 permanent and essential characters which distinguish natural 
 classes, orders, genera and species are transmitted infallibly 
 and entire ; but the fadl is sometimes otherwise with the quali- 
 ties which mark the variety. The latter are produced by 
 temporary causes and, as already suggested, are unstable, 
 superficial and uncertain. They make one individual to differ 
 from another, and are personal in their nature. To this group 
 belong all those bodily imperfedtions and tendencies which 
 may by any means be eliminated. In these personal and com- 
 monly transient peculiarities, one is more likely to resemble 
 parents than grandparents or remoter kindred, but the reverse 
 is occasionally true, the result being determined by defledting 
 influences. A peculiar conformation or infirmity which has 
 once appeared in a family, and which seemed forever lost, may 
 reappear after a long interval. Thus a person may receive and 
 transmit what he did not seemingly possess. Some of these 
 cases of ' ' reversion ' ' — cases in which individuals resume 
 ancestral types — are explained by supposing that the family 
 mark, whatever it may be, remains latent till called forth by 
 the exciting causes which are necessary to convert fundlional 
 tendency into fundtional activity, or say, predisposition into 
 disease. In other instances, however, this explanation may 
 not apply, as when a malformation or a supernumerary mem- 
 ber is withheld from the children, but appears in the grand-
 
 children, etc. Irregularities of this and other kinds are doubt- 
 less connedled with the fadl that onlj' one of the progenitors 
 is, as a common thing, abnormally formed. The father may- 
 determine the organization of the first generation, the mother 
 of the second, and vice versa, the result depending, often in an 
 unknown way, on the foreign blood which marriage has intro- 
 duced. However frequent these divergences from the usual 
 order, and however difficult it ma}^ be to interpret them, the 
 general law, in conformity to which organic peculiarities are 
 transmitted, is not annulled. I have not room to say more on 
 this interesting branch of m)^ subjedt. 
 
 Though those alterations of strudlure and perversions of 
 function growing out of our limited career, or which have 
 been fixed in the organization by heritage (producing diseases 
 in their nature critical,) are beyond the reach of medicine, 
 there are many disorders of a milder type, the result of recent, 
 mostly personal causes, which are more tradtable. These may 
 be relieved by appropriate medical treatment,* aided b)^ suit- 
 able regimen ; but as a general rule, a permanent cure cannot 
 be expedled while the causes are in operation. These causes, 
 often social, sometimes endemic or climatic, are all those 
 which adl detrimentally on the individual, lowering the tone 
 of the system, and contaminating the sources of vitality. 
 Often they may be removed by changes in the environment — 
 sometimes by the scavenger alone — and their effedts counter- 
 a<5ted by medicine. On the subjed; of hygiene, the intelli- 
 gent physician can speak with authority, and make his influ- 
 ence felt. He should take the lead in the great work of 
 purification and reformation, strengthening the hands of the 
 civil authorities, sewerage committees, temperance advocates 
 and moral reformers. 
 
 * Medicines are among the environing influences which art may employ 
 to modify and mold the functions, and counteracfl the eflfedls of morbific 
 agencies. Though incapable of subverting the movements determined by 
 ancestry, and thus changing the destiny of the individual, though pos- 
 sessed of but half the power for good ascribed to them by professional 
 enthusiasts, thej' are still sufficient for much useful work in their limited 
 sphere. 
 
 io8
 
 Hereditary and constitutional vices — those which prevent 
 the organism reaching maturity — run themselves out ; and 
 thus the race is preserved. In sick-room phrase, they adl as a 
 purge, and secure their own expulsion. If they are so flagrant 
 as to destroy the individual before the marriageable age, trans- 
 mission and perpetuity are of course impossible. If they be 
 of a milder grade, and take life at a somewhat later period, 
 fewer children are born, and these owing to congenital defi- 
 ciencies will in most cases die before puberty. Sometimes, as 
 in the case of idiots, imperfection is attended by infertility. 
 Thus poisons of whatever kind, incompleteness and insuffi- 
 ciency of every degree are eliminated ; not always in one or 
 two generations, but ultimately. This process of self-purifica- 
 tion, by which corrupt and corrupting elements are disinte- 
 grated and eje(5led, is forever going on. Were it otherwise, 
 were infirmity and incompetency handed down with as much 
 certainty as the opposite qualities, mankind would become 
 hopelessly degenerate. To prevent this result, "nature," 
 so-called, which is never sentimental, cuts off ruthlessly and 
 casts out the worthless specimens, preserving only the sound- 
 est and best. This is what Mr. Darwin calls, not happily, 
 " natural sele(5lion " — a dodlrine which I have preached, in my 
 poor way, twenty-five years. "The survival of the fittest," 
 as the general fadl is succindtly described, not only preserves 
 but tends to improve all living races. By the operation of 
 this law, the " most favored individuals " — those whose circum- 
 stances and natural endowments give them an advantage in 
 " the struggle for life " — are left in possession of the field, and 
 would become the sole representatives of the species were it not 
 for the constant intrusion of debasing elements. Filthy habits, 
 crowded tenements, hurtful occupations and practices, luxury 
 and privation, intemperance and other excesses, acfting upon 
 each generation, are a perpetual drag on humanity, forever 
 undoing the work of improvement and reform, and keeping 
 the standard low. 
 
 In savage life, the conservative principle adts with more 
 certainty and fewer hindrances than in the civilized state.
 
 The wild man is too poor in invention and resources to com- 
 mand many of the means of excess. Enervating luxuries and 
 several of the social vices are unknown to him. His life is 
 but a prolonged battle with hardships, a ceaseless struggle for 
 existence, in which none but the toughest can prevail. Those 
 not well qualified for this prospedtive warfare — the sickly, the 
 weakl3% the incompetent — perish in infanc}^ or are crushed out 
 in the process of training. Only the strongest and ablest, the 
 fleetest, most skillful and sagacious, those who can longest 
 endure privation and exertion, and who are best able to con- 
 tend with wild beasts and hostile tribes, are likel}^ to reach 
 manhood and have children. 
 
 But in the civilized condition, heavier burdens are imposed 
 on the conservative and eliminative process. A highly arti- 
 ficial society introduces many degrading elements and sundry 
 new diseases. The poor suffer from overwork, unhealthy 
 trades, want and exposure ; the rich from indolence, overfeed- 
 ing, anxiety about property and health, injurious pradtices 
 and fashionable follies of every name ; and all classes from 
 ungoverned passions, drunkenness, licentiousness and a 
 hundred vices. These cau.ses, many of them peculiar to an 
 advanced civilization, la}^ the foundation for disorders and 
 calamities in great variety. Not only this, but persistent 
 efforts are made to interfere with the work of depuration, and 
 to keep the poison as long as possible in the social system. 
 These efforts are prompted by the holiest instin(5ls of our 
 nature, but aim at a scarcely attainable objedt. Among the 
 needy, the children of worthless or vicious parents die early, 
 partly perhaps for the want of suitable care ; but with the 
 affluent, the same class may receive unwearied attention, the 
 poorer the specimen the greater the diligence. The services of 
 dodlor, nurses, grandmothers and maiden aunts are secured. 
 The maternal bosom, underlj-ing perhaps a useless ladteal 
 apparatus, is torn with forebodings of disaster. If the child 
 survive the storms of babyhood, new dangers loom up in the 
 form of bumps, scratches, whooping cough, measles, mumps, 
 etc., and every footstep must be watched by hireling attend-
 
 ants. Those moderate vicissitudes and irregularities in the 
 environment which excite temporary perturbations and health- 
 ful readlions, and which are indispensable to continued differ- 
 entiation and complete development, are considered as enemies 
 to be guarded against — guarded against on the false and 
 mischievous plea that the more regular the habits, and the 
 more uniform the life, the greater is the chance of survival. 
 The organism which cannot bear the alternations which are the 
 conditions of growth is doomed to perish — the sooner, perhaps, 
 for the means used to save it. 
 
 The marriage of an unsound to a sound person will not 
 eradicate a constitutional evil, but only tend to diffuse and 
 perpetuate it. If in such a case the better stock should have a 
 preponderating influence, and children are born who in their 
 turn have viable children, the mischief is for the time fixed. 
 Without losing any of its qualities, it is divided among many 
 descendants, and though concealed from view, it still exists in 
 a latent state, and will, sooner or later, probably make its way 
 to the light. In pairing there is, in the long run, as much 
 lost on one side as gained on the other. Pairing alone can 
 never remove corrupted blood, or change its essential charac- 
 ters, however much it may dilute it. Wherever this exists, 
 there lurks a poison — a poison which must be expelled before 
 safety is secured. Premature death is the natural remedy. 
 I do not deny that there may be, in particular instances, some 
 advantages from dilution. The contaminating elements may 
 perhaps be so mollified and weakened by a large infusion of 
 healthy material that favorable environing influences, inclusive 
 of needful medical treatment, may at length cause their elimi- 
 nation without the loss of life. But such a result can only be 
 attained by persistent good management, and a fortunate 
 concurrence of circumstances. If the radically defe<5live must 
 marr)^, perhaps the wisest course would be to choose for part- 
 ners those most like themselves, thus concentrating instead of 
 spreading the evil. In this way a family would become 
 extin(5t, but the race would prosper. 
 
 Children receiving a structure essentially faulty are exposed 
 to danger at every step. Disease in a decided form is produced
 
 by causes apparently trivial ; medicines do not give the cus- 
 tomary relief; and death follows, perhaps when no good 
 reason for it can be assigned. Some busybody thinks it 
 strange the dodlor cannot cure so simple a complaint as 
 catarrhal fever, or sore throat, or " a cold in the bowels." 
 Perhaps the prescriber thinks so too, but some good soul more 
 charitable than either attributes the result to an " inscrutable 
 Providence. ' ' The religious view is in accordance with the 
 fundamental fadls. Providence, whose wa^'s are inscrutable to 
 the afflidled, sacrifices a limited good that something better 
 may be secured — kills off the individual that the race may 
 live. Thus a great law, harsh in its execution but beneficent 
 in its results, is vindicated. Death on account of our fathers' 
 guilt or misfortune, death in any case, is a cruel remedy, but 
 it is eSedlual, and should commend itself to those who are 
 fond of the " heroic " in medicine. It should be regarded not 
 as a penalt}^, but as a means of salvation. Viewed in the 
 broad light of humanitj^, the loss of a single immature life is of 
 small account compared with the wide-spread evils which it 
 might inflidl — evils which could onlj^ be removed at a fearful 
 cost. These refledlions ma}- not assuage the grief of bereaved 
 friends, but science is satisfied when it has set forth the fadls 
 and declared the law. I suppose a verj^ large majoritj' of the 
 deaths in infancy and childhood, particularly in the large 
 cities, is due immediately to ineradicable vices of the constitu- 
 tion, hereditary and acquired, and remotel}^ to an effort to 
 remove from the social system unclean and destru(5live 
 elements. 
 
 You see, gentlemen, where the current of thought has drifted 
 us. You see the great cost of removing faults of organization 
 by nature's method. In view of the facts, the question is here 
 forced upon us whether the ends now imperfectl)' secured by 
 means involving so frightful a "slaughter of the innocents" 
 may not be attained in a better way. You will anticipate me 
 when I answer : A better way is known, and only the consent- 
 ing will is required to follow it. If a farmer be particular about 
 his herds and flocks, he excludes from among them all the
 
 unsound and base-born. Would he improve their quality ? 
 He selects the best — the healthiest, the handsomest, the most 
 intelligent, the more docile and teachable, etc., and breeds 
 from these exclusively till the end is attained. Sometimes he 
 sets up an ideal standard, and with this in his eye selects and 
 rejects with the assurance of reaching it. If he buy an animal, 
 he must know its pedigree. To allow a scurvy, ill-favored 
 brute to mingle its impure blood with that of the elect would 
 defeat his purpose and spoil his stock. Thus in a few genera- 
 tions he obtains superior varieties of horses, horned cattle, 
 sheep, pigs and poultry, all of them vigorous. In the same 
 manner, any particular organ or set of organs, any natural func- 
 tion, faculty or instinct may be developed. In this way, his 
 horses become good travelers and his cows good milkers ; his 
 sheep bear fine fleeces, his pigs fat easily, and his hens pro- 
 duce eggs abundantly. Any slight variation in the form of the 
 skeleton, shape of the head, length of the body or limbs, size 
 and strength of certain muscles, etc., may be increased by suc- 
 cessive small accumulations till it becomes a marked divergency, 
 and a permanent variety is established. The initial change 
 which is the first in the process of variation is often produced 
 without special intention by exposing an organism to new con- 
 ditions — a wild animal or plant, for example, to the influences 
 of domestication. The wide departures from the natural stand- 
 ard which have already resulted from these influences aided by 
 selection may be seen in the achievements of the dog-breeders, 
 the pigeon-fanciers, the fruit-raisers, the flower-culturists, etc. 
 Under their management, the living structure is like clay in 
 the hands of the potter. If there be limits to their power, 
 (which I dare not deny,) no one knows what they are. 
 
 From our present point of view, man does not differ from the 
 organisms below him, one law governing all. He has functions, 
 of which nutrition is the chief, which are exclusively vegeta- 
 tive — common to him and plants. These are first unfolded, 
 for a time make up his whole existence, and through life a 
 large and essential part of it. He has other functions depend- 
 ent on a nervous system which are as distinctly animal. They
 
 connect him intimatel)'- with all those li\'ing forms which give 
 proofs of sensation and volition. It is not till life is somewhat 
 advanced that he becomes anything more than an animal. 
 The intellectual functions, the third class, make their appear- 
 ance at a later period, and are usually considered as belonging 
 to man alone, though the rudiments are plainly discemable in 
 the lower animals. 
 
 The vegetal and animal functions do not look beyond the 
 good of the individual. The life which they give is in large 
 measure automatic and unconscious, having seemingly little 
 intrinsic value. Nearly all the lower organisms and many of 
 the higher appear to live not for themselves but for others, 
 cotemporaries and successors. Many furnish food for those 
 higher in the scale, while the remainder are mostly occupied 
 in preparing and providing for offspring, in many cases dying 
 as soon as this work is completed. Nature has little regard for 
 individuals ; sacrifices them without stint, but provides bej'ond 
 contingency for the species. The function, distinct from all 
 others, which preserves the race, carries it over from the 
 present to the future, bridging the gulf, as it were, is the 
 reproductive. It is common to all living beings, and secures 
 its end bj'- essentially the same means. Infallible instinct 
 guides it ; immutable law presides over it. Man, with all his 
 nobility, is as much dependent on it as the humblest plant or 
 animal, and is exempt from none of its conditions. Were it 
 not for some goodly inheritance it has already secured, and the 
 almost unlimited improvement it makes possible, humanity 
 might well despair. 
 
 Our present civilization, whatever else may be said of it, is 
 not what it should be. Though under the influence of the 
 most distinguished appliances, some of them having been in 
 operation for centuries, the average man has been but little 
 improved. We have made great progress in science, theoreti- 
 cal and practical ; have increased immenseh' our power over 
 the natural world ; have invented numerous labor-saving 
 machines ; have constructed steamboats, railroads and tele- 
 graphic cables ; built great cities, sinks of vice ; established
 
 colleges and free schools ; made politicians and stump orators 
 of our women ; set the negro at liberty and put him in office ; 
 in many cases got rich in worldly goods, and spoken vaunt- 
 ingly of ourselves ; but poverty, ignorance, degradation, pain, 
 disease and rottenness of every name are still rampant. Old 
 evils have sometimes disappeared, but new ones have taken 
 their place. By the road we are now traveling, millennial 
 perfection will never be reached. Our measures to reform the 
 world do not go to the root of the difficulty. With much 
 parade and diversified means, we try to purify the stream, but 
 permit every one to cast "sewage" into the fountain. How- 
 ever thorough the cleansing may be, it must be repeated with 
 every generation, and with very little gain. In this era of the 
 world, in the last third of the nineteenth century, when all the 
 facts are known, our practice should be reformed. The old 
 methods of extirpating evil and improving the species having 
 proved inadequate, suppose now we use a little practical 
 wisdom, and apply the simple but effectual rules of the stock- 
 raiser. While we provide prisons for the ' ' dangerous classes, ' ' 
 so-called, and asylums for the unfortunate ; while we take good 
 care of our paupers, and protect ourselves from ruffians, burglars 
 and assassins, let us not forget that ' ' like produces like, ' ' and 
 that " an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." I do 
 not say that judicious selection and rejection would at once 
 qualify all men and women for a more exalted sphere, and fit 
 each for heaven. It is not easj' to eradicate vices which are 
 the growth of many centuries of savage and civilized life. But 
 as a lover of my race, I would like to see the doctrine of human 
 perfectability — man's capacity for improvement — put to the test. 
 That something may be done to lift him from the mire, and fit 
 him for his proper position in the organic world, is certain. It 
 is not to our credit that we are less anxious for the purity and 
 health of our own lineage than for that of the ofttimes worth- 
 less brutes we are accustomed to rear. It is a shame that of 
 all those who die in New Haven, more than one-half, on 
 the average, are the cases of children under ten years, seven- 
 eighths of the latter doubtless from avoidable causes. There is 
 
 IIS
 
 no suflBcient reason — none that can be justified — why disease 
 and death in early life should be so much more frequent in our 
 own race than among our domestic animals that are well cared 
 for. When we remember that the intellect and moral sense, 
 the passions and instincts, vicious propensities, virtuous desires, 
 degrading tastes, and whatever qualities distinguish individuals 
 are seated in the organs, and that the organs within certain not 
 narrow limits may be modified and molded, their vital conditions 
 changed, and their functional exercises controlled b}" intelligent, 
 persistent breeding, and that those domestic influences which act 
 soinjuriousl}' on the offspring — want and wretchedness in the 
 family — will to a large extent be removed by the means which 
 reform and improve parents, our indifference as to the fitness 
 of those who perpetuate the race is not complimentary to our 
 civilization. ^ >;< ;i< :4; * * 
 
 The prevalent belief that the sexual faculty cannot be 
 restrained or directed, that it must always be left to the guid- 
 ance of a senseless instinct, that all with the necessary outfit, 
 of whatever race or parentage, be thej- criminals, debauchees, 
 natural cripples or other incurables, vagrants, scoundrels, or 
 outcasts, have the right to representation in the next genera- 
 tion — the right to go about defiling the fountain of our 
 dearest hopes, upsetting all our plans for improvement — is 
 irrational, not to say monstrous. The thought of caging the 
 authors of so much mischief must not now be entertained, 
 for facts prove that the faculty in question will submit to checks. 
 Public opinion does not permit marriage between persons too 
 nearl}- allied by blood, or between young people whose bodies 
 are not matured by age, partly on the ground that the children 
 might be deformed, or punj- and sickly. Popular sentiment in 
 these cases imposes restrictions which are respected because 
 reasonable and proper. I am not about to say what new pro- 
 hibitions would be useful, or what additions to the statute 
 already in existence should be made. Possibly the evils of 
 which I complain and the remedy are outside the proper sphere 
 of legislation. But a few years ago it was assumed that a 
 government had a right to life, and might use any suitable
 
 means, whether within or without its usual sphere, to preserve 
 it. Our national life, or if you please our national welfare, is 
 in greater peril from reckless breeding than it ever was from 
 rebeldom in arms. I am not certain that anything commen- 
 surate with the evils to be corrected or the good to be attained 
 can be done, but our legislators and the sovereigns who elect 
 them should know what are the facts. When all comprehend 
 the situation fully, see plainly the terrible consequences which 
 flow from present customs, we may find out whether a remedy 
 be possible. A determined purpose, guided by wisdom, and 
 modified by accumulating experience, may yet work out 
 important results. 
 
 Faithfully have I endeavored to give a correct but very 
 general view of the important topics which have come up for 
 discussion. I have passed over much ground, selecting my 
 path where the foundation seemed secure. For the most part 
 I have avoided debatable questions. At almost every step 
 thoughts were started which I was tempted to follow, but I 
 would not be led aside. Out of the great variety and abundance 
 of facts, I have had no little difficulty in selecting and group- 
 ing in an impressive way those best suited to my purpose. 
 Sometimes, out of regard for feelings which I respect, or for 
 prejudices which must be endured, I have spoken less plainly 
 than I might. If, for any reason, I have not told the whole 
 truth, I have said as much probably as will be borne now. 
 Men do not like to be told of their inherited defects, and are 
 not always patient when their right to assume the parental 
 relation is questioned.
 
 THE TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR PRESS, NEW HAVEN.
 
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