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with carbuncles and pestilential buboes; according
to others it was malignant inflammation of the
spleen; and lastly, it was said to be the black
death itself. The public were greatly alarmed,
and the Government thought it right not only to
issue interrogatories to the Russian Government,
but also to send physicians to the haunts of the
disease; and then it was found that two different
kinds of disease had appeared in an epidemic form
in different parts of Europe, and that the fears of
the public had united them into one. In the
Russian capital there was an epidemic of two or
more fevers of the typhoid class; and in Eastern
Prussia and the neighbouring states of the confederation
a peculiar inflammation of the membranes
of the brain and spinal cord appeared in an
epidemic form and had been remarkably fatal.
It was further ascertained that at St. Petersburgh,
where the great mass of the inhabitants are ill-fed,
ill-clothed, and ill-lodged, it was not uncommon for
typhus and typhoid fevers to break out in a virulent
manner in the autumn and spring of the year;
but this year, during the months of March and
April, when the melting of the ice, and the period
of the great Careme (Lent) had brought an unusually
large number of vagrant workmen to the
capital, the fever appeared in greater virulence;
and there was added to them another form of the