Report on the cholera epidemic of 1866 in England : supplement to the twenty-ninth annual report of the Registrar-General of births, deaths, and marriages in England / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command.
- General Register Office Northern Ireland
- Date:
- 1868
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report on the cholera epidemic of 1866 in England : supplement to the twenty-ninth annual report of the Registrar-General of births, deaths, and marriages in England / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![those who doubt this accept the principle for the moment as hypothesis, which the subsequent crucial facts will at once either establish or dispel. Then the elements of the disease must either have been diffused (1) by personal contact ; (2) by translation through the air ; (3) or by dissemination in vapour of sewers ; or (4) by the various waters. Now the evidence that cholera can be communicated in these ways by chohine is conclusive. Instances of a cholera patient brought to a distant house and com- municating forthwith the disease to an inmate are too numerous to be mere coin- cidences ; as the chances by the doctrines of probabilities against such numerous coincidences are inconceivably great. But it is evident that as the population of every district of London is in free communication with every other district, and is constantly interchanging its residents on both sides of the river, so by this mode of communication cases would be, as indeed they were to a limited extent, freely distributed all over London. The same might be said of the air : any gas generated in any point of London is by the law of gaseous diffusion speedily distri- buted through the atmosphere ; and matters in suspension are distributed by the winds, which are tlius described during the first four weeks, extending from July 8th to August 4th, which saw the rise and decline of cholera : variable; N.E, and E.N.E. ; variable; W. and W.N.W. The winds were not still ; but blew in various directions over London at the rate of eight miles an hour during the first three weeks, and then with double that velocity. If they carried cholera on their wings they must necessarily have shed its poison over all London: the action of the winds could not have been confined to the small area of East London. In India the cholera matter is scattered by the natives on the surface of the earth ; and may be either washed into the tanks or be dispersed in clouds of dust.* But in a town of waterclosets and privies the diffusion of dry cholera dust must be exceed- ingly circumscribed. f In the watercloset system the cholera flux in vapour, if it is not sometimes f generated, is sometimes distributed in sewers, and is driven into the dwellings f of the people. An instance of diffusion in sewer vapour at Southampton I is given by Professor Parkes in his masterly“^aper. f Professor Parkes in ’ the same paper shows that the foul water of the Peninsular steamer “Poonah” proved much more virulent than sewer vapour. And it is evident that the amount of zymotic matter evaporated from cholera flux, and entering the system through air, must be inconsiderable as compared with the amount that may enter through a water supply contaminated with sewage. J All over London the sewage exhalations went on during the summer of 1866, and produced certain effects. It happened, too, that several districts in the group so heavily visited by cholera lie in the particular region which then derived no advantage from the contemplated low-level sewer. But too much importance must not be attached to this circumstance. The whole of the region on the Thames from Chelsea to the city of London inclusive is in the same predicament; and there the mortality by cholera in the present epidemic was low ; in the Chelsea water-field, for example, the deaths by cholera did not exceed 4 in 10,000, nor is the rate exceeded by the average mortality of the whole region along the proposed low-level sewer except contains only a single ovule ; and these circumstances led Naudin to make the following interesting experiments ; a flower was fertilized by three grains and succeeded perfectly ; twelve flowers were fertilized by two grains, and seventeen flowers by a single grain, and of these one flower alone in each lot perfected its seed ; and it deserves especial notice that the plants produced by these two seeds never attained their proper dimensions, and bore flowers of remarkably small size. From these facts we clearly see that the quantity of the peculiar formative matter which is contained within the spermatozoa and pollen-grains is an all-important element in the act of fertilisation, not only in the full development of the seed, but in the vigour of the plant produced from such seed.” [ The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S. Vol. II., pp. 363-64.] See Pick’s letter on Zurich outbreak. f Appendix to Ninth Report of Medical Officer of Privy Council, pp. 244-253. if Dr. Hassall remarks that the sporules of some fungi are aerial and repel water, but vihrions are true aquatic productions : he found no vibrions in the water distilled from rice-water flux at a low temperature.—Appendix to Board of Health Report of Committee for Scientific Inquiries, page 305.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24976854_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
