This attitude was still prevalent in the last Gulf war. When John got fired, he threatened to mail his boss a letter that contained a virulent chemical. The wind from the north-west, known as the cers, blows with great violence, and the sea-breeze is often laden with pestilential effluvia from the lagoons. While thus rejecting all the lessons of morbid anatomy and pathology, he put forward views respecting the causes of disease which hardly bear to be seriously stated.