Noah Webster on Absurd, Unjust Health Measures

See also:
Is the Cold and Flu due to Weather Conditions instead of Viruses?
Contagion OR Poisonous Air as a Cause of Mass Illness? An Historical Perspective

Noah Webster (1758-1843), Christian and famed author of the 1828 American Dictionary, criticized absurd, unjust measures in the name of public health — including regarding alleged contagion. (Sound familiar?)

Such measures not only tyrannize the inhabitants, but by overlooking the true cause of mass illness, they allow it to continue unchecked. And so in his Brief history of epidemic and pestilential diseases, he writes:

But what I contend for, is, that we must not expect the best health laws, most rigorously executed, will ever be successful in g[uar]ding cities against epidemic pestilence. In our reliance on such [act]ions, we expose ourselves to perpetual disappointment; we expose the lives of citizens; we overlook the true causes of the evil, and neglect the only means of preventing or mitigating its effects.

Further, the opinion of the specific contagion of the plague has originated many, not only useless, but barbarous regulations. Such is the practice of confining the sick to close houses; and still more, of confining the citizens of an infected town within its limits, by an armed force—which I am informed has been done in Europe. In Marseilles, the first persons seized were confined to their houses by the point of the bayonet.

An ignorance of the nature of a disease and its degree of danger, may be pardonable in a prince or the legislators of a free state. But there is a point, beyond which ignorance in medical professors, becomes a crime. No science is necessary however to convince any man, that most pestilences, proceed only from the deranged state of the elements, aided by the morbid exhalations of cities. This is a fact that may be known to a certainty by very little reading and observation. It was well known in past ages, when men were more governed by observation, than by theories and erroneous reasoning. Mead’s attempts to prove the specific contagion of plague, aided by his popularity, had a most surprising success; his treatise was received as a standard of truth; it every where suspended enquiries and checked a spirit of investigation, which might have dissipated error; it was the basis of the present laws of quarantine, which are applied, in thousands of cases, where they are as improper and as little wanted, as if applied to prevent an epidemic pleurisy, or head-ache, embarrassing commerce, without the shadow of necessity. But these are not the worst effects. The erroneous system of specific contagion, has mislead mankind into a fatal security, on the subject of the local causes of diseases. Supposing the laws competent to guard public health, men have not attended to the best modes of constructing houses and cities, and to the means of watering and cleansing them—means by which all the slighter pestilences might be avoided, and the more severe ones, greatly mitigated. Hence I am persuaded, that the received theory of specific contagion is the direct cause of most of the fatal plagues that now scourge civilized Europe and America. For it will be observed, that pestilence has always been the peculiar curse of populous cities. Of about two hundred general plagues, recorded in history, a few only have been so violent as to spread over countries into villages and farm houses; almost all have been limited to large towns, evidently demonstrating that they would never have affected mankind, without the influence of the impure air generated in those places. This is a truth, as unquestionable as it is important; and on a conviction of this hangs the safety of men from that dreadful calamity. Had Mead, and other eminent physicians taken the same pains to lead mankind into truth, as into error, we should long ago have introduced improvements into the arrangement and structure of our cities, which would have secured our citizens from nine tenths of the infectious diseases, by which they have been alarmed and distressed.

At the same time, had men understood the common operation of infection, which may be made obvious to the most ordinary minds, merchants would not, at this day, have been harrassed with the necessity of performing quarantine, to guard against epidemic diseases.

Noah Webster, A brief history of epidemic and pestilential diseases; with the principal phenomena of the physical world, which precede and accompany them, and observations deduced from the facts stated. : In two volumes.
(Hartford: 1799). In the digital collection Evans Early American Imprint Collection. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/N27531.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed September 15, 2025.

If you find this site helpful, please consider supporting our work.

Please follow and like us: