Thomas Beddoes to the Printer of The Bristol Gazette and Public Advertiser and of Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, 28 April 1803
TO THE PRINTER.
SIR,
A PLAN for saving suffering and lives is opposed by a detail of facts. Chance throws information in the professor’s way, which induces him to offer to submit it, whether this counter-statement is not grossly erroneous. If anything further was to be said, he judged it more decent for the parties, and more satisfactory to others, that indifferent persons should say it. He will now therefore only observe, that he hopes he is not quite so wrongheaded as to think of referring unascertainable or difficult points. For what should hinder you, Sir, or your compositor, from finding out whether at such a school the boys mixed freely, as is asserted, or, whether those in the Influenza were separated, and the house fumigated. Cannot anyone with his feelings about him tell whether the fumes, as recommended, are offensive or irritating? To medical umpires he would refer how far lunatics resist contagion; as also, whether he has not stated the arguments for infection in the case of influenza; which is denied in your last number.
After all, Sir, it is nugatory to adduce certain exceptions; by such logic, measles may be proved not infectious. In Influenza, the instances in dispute, if examined to the bottom, will prove that exceptions are more uncommon than would appear from hear-say or loose inquiry: in this would consist the public use of a reference. Depend upon it, Sir, that what is coming abroad from medical men concerning the progress of the epidemic (which has all along prevailed in different places, and still prevails) will more than sanction a plan of prevention, deduced from fair analogy.
Your obedient servant,
THOMAS BEDDOES.
CLIFTON, 28th April, 1803.
Published: 1. The Bristol Gazette and Public Advertiser, vol. 37, no. 1856, Thursday 5 May 1803, Bristol Central Library Archives; cf. another printed copy in the Richard Smith Papers, Biographical Memoirs, Volume 5, 1784–1789, Bristol Archives 35893/36/e_i, 450. 2. Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, vol. 54, no. 2826, Saturday 30 April, 1803.