A CHAPTER IJSr FIRE INSURANCE. 759 



twenty days on sixteen ships ; therefore these cases could not have 

 originated at Calcutta, but must have been derived from infective ma- 

 terial on boai'd ship. If cholera is acquired from the infective material 

 on board ship, how is it that the infective matter is, as a rule, so ineffect- 

 ive, and acts only exceptionally ? If cholera lasts more than twenty 

 days on board ship, then there must be other causes than those which 

 prevail on land. Let it be assumed that the infective material pro- 

 ceeding from human beings can call forth the disease after the third 

 day and up to the twentieth day. Now, cases of cholera have occurred 

 on board ship as long as forty days after leaving port, of which fact 

 I could give many examples. But these are very exceptional. May 

 it not be assumed that in such cases the infective material might be 

 brought on board and kept effective in some form or other, and that 

 individuals might constantly come in contact with the infecting agent? 

 For exceptional circumstances exceptional causes must be assumed. 

 Properly considered, it will be found that cholera behaves on ships pretty 

 much the same as ague does. When ships leave a malarious district, 

 cases of ague occur on board, but when farther out at sea they cease 

 to occur. As a rule, the illnesses happen only in those individuals who 

 come from shore, though exceptionally the disease shows itself in indi- 

 viduals who have never been ashore. But epidemics of ague have oc- 

 curred on ships, as Hirsch has recorded in his work on " Malariakrank- 

 heiten," where the infection of the crew on shore appears to have been 

 quite impossible, as on a ship which went from an Eastern seaport to 

 England, and yet no one has ventured to say that ague is not depend- 

 ent on the soil, or that it spreads on ships by contagion from man to 

 man where the people have not been infected on land. The sweat of 

 the sufferers from ague may be likened unto the stools of cholera- 

 patients. If the infectious disease, ague, were as dangerous as cholera, 

 it is not unlikely that many more observations on contagion from cases 

 of fever, and on the presence of ague on ships, would have been made 

 and recorded. Any exceptional occurrence in the way of ague on ships 

 would almost certainly be more likely to be recorded if they happened 

 on men-of-war or emigrant-ships than if they occurred on merchant- 

 men, on the ground that the rare event is witnessed by a large number 

 of men, and because the state of health of men-of-war and emigrant- 

 ships is more carefully registered than is the case with smaller vessels. 



■♦»» 



A CHAPTER m FIRE INSITRANCE. 



Bt geoege iles. 



LAST year was not extraordinary in its fire record. It bore no such 

 calamity in its course as 1871 or 1873, when the nation was called 

 to mourn for Chicago or Boston. Yet there is good reason to believe 

 that during 1884 fires cost the United States $160,000,000. This enor- 



