The recent diffusion of cholera in Europe / John Simon.

  • Simon, John.
Date:
1872
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The recent diffusion of cholera in Europe / John Simon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    received from Mr. John Netten Radcliffe, on last year's diffusion of Asiatic Cholera in parts of Continental Europe; a diffusion which, as you are aware, became during the summer so extensive as to excite much alarm in this country, and of which, even at the present time, the consequences cannot be said to have ended. The Report is mainly founded on communications which the Lords of the Council, as administrators of the Quarantine Act and, till recently, of the Diseases Prevention Act, have received from other departments of Her Majesty's Govern- ment, with regard to the movements of Cholera in foreign countries. In the Medical Department, I have for some years assigned to Mr. Radcliffe the duty of examining all such communications, and noting their results : a duty which he has discharged with much care and learning; and no doubt you will remember, as founded on this class of communications, and as having been laid before Parliament in the Appendix to my Eighth Annual Report, Mr. Radcliffe's lucid exposition of the steps of the great Cholera-migration which infected Egypt and Turkey in the middle of 1865, and rapidly led to our own considerable visitation of 1865-66. In Mr. Radcliffe's present Report the special interest attaches to his important suggestion that a new route is in rapid course of development for the conveyance of Asiatic Cholera into Europe; and that probably the Continental infection which attracted public notice here last year, but which seems to have begun two years previously, entered Russia in 1869 by this, then comparatively undeveloped, new channel of intercourse. The route to which Mr. RadclifTe refers, as one of vastly increased and increasing traffic, is that which, traversing Trans- caucasia from east to west, and having Tiflis at about its mid-point, brings the Black Sea into free relations with the Caspian and with Northern Persia; a route which within the last few weeks has had a railway opened for its western half, and of which the eastern half is in course of having the same accommodation provided for it. It must, I fear, be admitted as a real and not inconsiderable danger, that, in proportion as movement becomes quicker from Persia and India towards the great market-places and railway-centres of Europe, Europe may be found to have lost one of the best protections it has hitherto enjoyed against frequent incursions of Asiatic Cholera. If this consideration is highly important to England, evidently it is of still greater and more immediate importance to the more eastward countries of Europe ; and those countries, if the danger is as estimated, are, of course, most deeply concerned in the object of devising securities against it. Possibly Mr. Radcliffe's line of study may have been anticipated in one or more of those countries; and possibly Russia, which, if Mr. Radcliffe is right, has already so severely suffered through the new channel of infection, may now be on her guard against future like importations. Since, however, nothing to any such effect appears in any of the communications which have reached this Department, and since it would, I believe, be of interest to foreign epidemiologists, observant of the migrations of Cholera, that they should have before them in Mr. Radcliffe's Report, if they do not already otherwise know, the facts which he brings into prominence, I would venture to suggest that the Report might perhaps with advantage be brought under notice of the other Govern- ments concerned in the subject-matter; and I would accordingly propose for your approval that, with this object, it should be submitted for Earl Granville's consideration. I have the honour to be, Sir^ Your obedient servant, JOHIs^ SIMON. Medical Department of the Privy Council and Local Government Board. June 8, 1872. [417]