The Philosopher's Mite to the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Date:
[1851?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Philosopher's Mite to the Great Exhibition of 1851. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in philosophy to be swayed by any argument unsup¬ ported by facts. Please to observe a whole group of such facts in the according testimony of all nations. We have already said, that the severest distempers of an epidemical character have travelled from Asia. The annals of the various European medical boards show, that among the military, the most violent out¬ breaks of cholera have occurred in barracks where an undue and accidental influx of troops has over-ani- malised such buildings. This is so notorious, that it led to the above-mentioned general order from the Governor of India in council, prohibiting the re¬ ception into barracks of detachments of soldiers on their march. A like contingency, civil but not mili¬ tary, threatens your grand and benevolent scheme ; the more dangerous, because a voluntary influx of free citizens from all parts cannot be so well controlled, nor can their mode of living be regulated by any regimen or discipline. The magnificent accommodations of London, together with the salutary improvements recently introduced, may do much to contravene the evil; but so long as foreigners congregate in the lowest purlieus of your metropolis, and so long as you have a river reeking with nocent vapours, ap¬ preciable even by the crassest scent, our confidence cannot be very satisfactory. Our youthful impressions left on the mind by the graphic sketch of the plague of Athens, and above all of the cause of it—a crowded population compelled together by the calamities of war, present to our mind no comfortable materials for reflection. The