The New York Herald

New York Academy of Medicine—The Cholera Debate—Definition of the Meaning of Words—Proposition to Isolate Greenwich Street.

A meeting of the above society was held last evening, pursuant to adjournment at Convention Hall, Wooster street. John W. Francis, Esq., M. D., President of the Academy, occupied the chair.

On motion the roll was called and twenty-two members answered to their names, sufficient to constitute a quorum. The minutes of the last meeting were then read by the Secretary, and on motion unanimously adopted.

The President then enquired, "Gentlemen what is your pleasure?"

Dr. Drake hereupon rose and said, he believed the subject before the Academy was the debate relating to the cholera.

Hereupon on motion, the Academy resolved itself into Committee of the Whole, Dr. Warren in the chair. (which was afterwards taken by Dr. Carter, who afterwards came into the room

The Secretary then read the minutes of the two last committees, and they were, on motion, adopted.

The Chair then declared the resolution offered by Dr. Drake, to be in order. This resolution, after a lengthy recital of the several facts in relation to the supposed appearance of the cholera at Staten Island, and in Greenwich street, in this city, proposes, on account of the communicable nature of the cholera, as recognized by the Academy, to provide for isolating Greenwich street, and all other places where there is danger, by barring out and isolating the said places, and all places in danger of infection, by severe quarantine laws, and other measures, on account of the alleged communicability of the cholera.

Dr. Stevens spoke in support of the resolution, which he said he regarded as a bare recital of facts, and he thought both the public and the profession required the passage of these resolutions, or something similar. The whole question, he thought, turned upon personal communicability. The learned Dr. then proceeded to state several interesting facts tending to prove the communicability of the cholera.

The Dr. then handed up to the Secretary, for perusal, a letter received from Dr. Dorsey, of New Jersey, relating several strong facts tending to show how the cholera was carried from place to place, and communicated from person to person at the time of the cholera, in 1832-33.

Dr. Sherwood followed on the same side, and brought forward several strong and startling facts tending to prove the contagious nature of cholera. The conclusion of his mind from all the facts before him, was that the disease was contagious, though he had thought differently once.

Dr. Buel thought the gentleman who had spoken had gone too far, and proved too much in making cholera a contagious disease, the same as small pox. Dr. B. hereupon proceeded to examine the state of the facts, as relating to the several cases which had occurred. The single case which had occurred in Greenwich street, was in a house which contained two hundred people, and only one person of those two hundred had taken the disease. Now if it was contagious it amounted to nothing, for it was only the half of one per cent! He should like to know how, if it was contagious, it had got into the packet ship New York? Was there a Pandora's box on board? Was it opened? Did the cholera come out, and, then, did the passengers catch it? If they would tell him it was so, then he would give it up. (Dr. Stevens and Dick's here intimated, as we understood, that there was on board what wes equivalent to such a Pandora's box.) He (Dr. Buel) thought there was not enough to carry out the idea of the gentlemen; there was not ground enough for this Academy to go before the public and tell them solemnly that we had got a contagious disorder of such a kind among us.

Dr. Sherwood quoted the opinions of Dr. Henry, of London, on the contagion of the small pox, in an argument upon the general question of contagion.

Dr. Stevens explained. He did not say it was universally contagious, nor uniformly so; but that it might certainly be, and certainly was, oftentimes, communicated.

Dr. Bliss rose and opened huge budget to prove, as it appeared, that the cholera was contagious. He began with observing that the best thing he had seen on the subject, was a paragraph in a newspaper headed "Is the Cholera Contagious?" and it said. "Yes—no!" That paragraph contained the whole truth, it was and it was not contagious. The Doctor then went into a definition of the words contagion and infection, and as is usual with many clever definers, the definition was more obscure than the original thing defined.

After this the Doctor proceeded to a long history of the cholera, and traced it up and down throughout all countries, wherever it had appeared. He began at Quebec and Montreal, showed that with the stream emigrants there went also a stream of cholera; that the soldiers from Governor's Island who went up the canal to the Black Hawk war, carried the cholera with them into the fortresses of the Indians. He then tracked it in Asia, in Europe, at Calcutta in the Coromandel, at Ceylon, in the Persian Gulf, up the Tigris to Bagdad, &c. He showed how it followed the armies, and also how it often suddenly went through the air and appeared where nobody had appeared to bring it He proved that sometimes isolation and Quarantine were effectual; sometimes they were not; that some times the cholera caught, and sometimes it evidently was not.

From all we heard of the Doctor's two hours' compilation we came to the solemn and decided conclusion that the cholera is decidedly contagious and decidedly not contagious; that it travels and sits still; that it wanders about all over the world, with companies of men like fleas in a truss of hay or a bag of wool; that it also travels to distant places without any company; that it sits and hatches for a certain period of incubation, and that it comes where it has not been hatched; that it is atmospheric, and that it is not; that it is catching by infection, and that it is not; that quarantine laws and cordons sanitaire are very useful and are perfectly useless. In a word, we discovered that it is a Proteus and no one can catch it, that we knew all about it, and we knew nothing at all about it; and that for full information the public is referred to a paragraph in some newspaper which asserts that it is and it is not contagious

Dr. Pratt followed, and stated that the man in Greenwich street had been treated by an apothecary who gave him 10 grs. of tartar emetic, which puked and purged him till he died. Dr. Pratt reprobated the idea of getting up the excitement, and frightening our women and children out of their wits, by telling them that an alligator was come here among us, and it was certainly going to bite them, for it would bite. He thought it quite ridiculous.

Dr. Warren thought it would be good thing if they could agree upon terms, and know what they meant by contagion, infection, &c. The doctor then produced a paper, containing a definition of his own, by which it appeared that the cholera was infectious—that it was sometimes, when an epidemic, contagious—that it did not depend upon specific virus, but upon a malarious atmospheric infectious communication, &c. Upon the whole, the definition, though very elaborate and learned, was not very intelligible to our minds. He (Dr. W.) thought it best to call it infectious, not contagious; the former was a more agreeable term.

Dr. Stewart gave a powerful, able and thrilling description of the case in Greenwich street. He was called in four hours before the man died; he gave him the Cartwright remedy, (the same, we believe, Secretary Walker recommended) viz: sub muriat, hydrogen camphora and capsicum, as 10 grs. Dr. S. then moved that the committee rise and publish a report on the subject.

Dr. Manly then rose, and in a clear, cool, witty strain, attacked the advocates of contagion, or rather their arguments. He showed that the enquiry into what produced or communicated the disease, would not help in the cure; it only referred to hygienic precautions. He asked, would any one say that influenza was contagious, and thereby spread alarm and panic? Cholera was in the same predicament. The doctor here related an anecdote to show the worth and value of their definitions and settlement of abstractions.

The late Dr. Mitchell was, at the time of the yellow fever, busy with the members of the Corporation, going about inspecting their houses, &c. Being the Magnus Apollo of the day, he was expected to give his opinion, which he did as an oracle. Going over in a boat with some members of the Corporation, to Brooklyn, he explained to them, after talking of septum, malaria, and other things, that the infecting fluid in the air was the gaseous oxide of azote. The boatman heard him, and pondered deeply on what he heard; and, going home, he told his wife: "Now I know all about it; I have found it out; I know what it is—it is an ox hide in a boat." Now, that served the public just as well, and they were just as satisfied; and just so much value were their incomprehensible definitions, and distinctions and scientific explanations. Dr. M. then explained how the doctors should act—as the fox did in the fable to the lion. The lion being sick, consulted a hog and asked him to smell his breath? "Is it bad?" said the lion. "Horrid," said the hog, "it stinks." Thereupon the lion knocked him down for telling the truth. Then he consulted the goat. "Is it bad?" said the lion. "Oh! dear no," said the goat, afraid of the fate of the hog, "it is quite sweet;" then he knocked him down for telling a lie. Next he consulted the fox; "is it bad?" said the lion. "Indeed," said the fox, "I don't know, for I've got a dreadful bad cold." So the fox knew nothing about it; and the doctors were pretty nearly in the same case. Dr. M. continued further in a witty and yet learned strain, to discuss the question of contagion, and produced an impression evidently tending to a defeat of the resolution and its supporters.

Dr. Roberts then arose and came to the aid of the contagionists in a very persuasive, fluent, and eloquent oration, as far as regards sound and words. He regretted profoundly that the public had been admitted to those discussions; the public had nothing to do with them: it was an interesting subject: it imported the interests of society that the question should be settled; the Academy was a very influential body, and its opinions had great influence with the public, and, therefore, it was very important; its opinion should be pronounced upon this matter; yet the public ought not to have been admitted. He hoped, therefore, the Academy would not drop the subject. Meantime, it was very important to know the meaning of what they were all talking about; and he, (Dr. R.) was of the opinion that the Academicians did not exactly know the real meaning, that is, the proper definition of the words contagion and infection He proposed to call the disease contagio-infectio, on infectio-contagious But he had prepared a paper, which he had in his pocket, and he would produce it and read it to the Academy. The doctor then pulled out a formidable packet from his pocket. (General consternation evidently spread over the room, almost empty, and among the few members, now present, at this new aspect of the affair, and now, after so long debating this extraordinary retrograde movement, to receive instructions and tuition in the elements of the literal meaning of the words, from the therapeutical lexicographer, who came forward to volunteer to illuminate his fellow-academicians.)

Dr. Stevens hereupon rose and spoke to a point of order. He showed plainly enough that there was no thing in the resolutions before the Academy, now met together in committee of the whole, about the meaning or definition of two common English words, which had been defined some hundred years ago, and some hundred thousand times. The doctor then showed what was the real question before the committee, viz: Whether New York should be isolated, or rather whether Greenwich street should be isolated, insulated and blockaded, and cut off from inter communication with 'all the rest of the city, and be surrounded by something like a cordon sanitaire, as proposed by Dr. Drake? And, also, the doctor showed that this proposition to isolate Greenwich street and the neighborhood was predicated not upon the terms contagion or non-contagion, infection or non-infection, which Dr. Roberts came forward to explain and provide a new meaning for, to the world, but that the isolating, insulating cordon-drawing proposition of Dr. Drake was based upon the fact of the communicability of the cholera, and, therefore, the incommunicability of Greenwich street was to be established and maintained; and it was to be cut off and separated, for a time, from the rest of New York, because of the communicability of the cholera.

This proposition, coming, too, from a contagionist to whom the doctor had come like a forlorn hope in the hour of need, to lift up, as it were, from the ground, and rescue from beating a retreat, seemed quite to disconcert the volunteer lexicographical definer of abstract terms, by still more abstract expressions. Dr. Stephens, however, candidly explained that he rejected the terms of infectio-contagious, and contagio-infectious, which Dr. Roberts had invented to remove all the difficulty and misunderstanding, (which, as it will be seen, are eminently calculated to clear the matter up and make it as plain as Dr. Mitchell's ox's hide in the boat.) and seemed wisely determined to discard them altogether, and stick fast to the terms used in the poor forgotten and neglected resolution, viz: the "communicability of the cholera, and the proposed in-communicability and isolation of Greenwich street."

Hereupon Dr. Roberts, after recovering from this unkind cut, rallied again, and went on in a strain of copious winning eloquence, to support his proposition and prove the necessity of enlightening the public upon the contagiousness or non-contagiousness of this infectio-contagious and contagio-infectious atmospheric, telluric, miasmatic, malarious, omnonymous disease.

Dr. Gardner hereupon rose and moved that the committee do now rise and report progress, and that the paper of definitions proposed to be made by Dr. Roberts, for the edification of the academicians, be made the order of the day for the next meeting of the Academy.

The motion, being seconded, was then put by the Chair, and carried unanimously.

The Committee thereupon rose, the president of the Academy again took the chair, and Dr. Carter, as chairman of the late committee, reported progress in the following words, viz: "That the committee had made considerable progress." The doctor, however, did not say wherein they had progressed, nor how, whether backwards or forwards, upward or downwards, which was left as a matter of sub-intellection.

The report from the committee, by its Chairman, was then adopted.

Dr. Drake hereupon moved that the Academy adjourn, to meet again this night two weeks The President decided that this motion was not admissible, the regular meeting of the Academy occurring before that time Hereupon Dr. Drake withdrew his proposition; but whether the above or the original resolution, relating to the "isolation," from the expressions, and noise and rush to the door, in the hurry of members to get away, it having grown so late, we could not distinctly ascertain.

Dr. Taylor then moved that the Academy proceed to make its usual nominations, whereupon a number of nominations of officers, &c. of the society were made,

Dr. Roberts then, in a warm and animated speech, amid much confusion and interruption, urged upon the meeting the necessity and propriety of excluding the public from their future meetings. He maintained that all persons ought to be excluded except the profession. The reason on which he founded his proposition was, because, as he said, the press had greatly misrepresented them; their squabbles were not intended for the public eye. He, therefore, proposed to leave the public scene, and have nothing more to do with them. No action for the present was had on this proposition.

The Academy then, on motion, adjourned to meet again on next Wednesday evening.