Note 9 — INTERMENTS IN TOWNS.

Two days in the week the London Fever Hospital is open to the friends of the patients, who often spend a considerable time in the wards, sometimes sitting on the beds of the sick; yet these visitors never take fever themselves, nor are they ever known to convey it by their clothes to persons out of the hospital. In like manner the persons employed to convey the clothes of the fever-patients from the wards of the hospital do not take fever, nor is there any evidence whatever that typhus fever is, or can be, propagated merely by the clothes; yet it is remarkable that the laundresses who wash the clothes, which often contain excrementitious matters from the patients, or from the dead, of an amount perceptible to the senses, rarely if ever escape fever. It is inferred, that in this case the poison is by the heat put in a state of vapour, which is inhaled, and being sufficient in quantity, produces the disease.