1885.] , on Cholera : its Cause and Prevention. 289 



given a few months ago to tlie people of Munich by Professor von 

 Pettenkofer, who is acknowledged to be one of the highest scientific 

 authorities on the etiology of cholera, it will be found that the 

 German Gelehrter and the English administrator say practically the 

 same thing. 



As this paper is intended for the perusal of persons who do not 

 specially concern themselves with pathology, I will enter as little as 

 possible upon subjects of controversy, regarding it as of much more 

 importance that those notions as to the cause and nature of cholera, 

 about which there is no dispute, should be generally understood, 

 than that the claims of rival investigators should be vindicated. In 

 the slow process by which new knowledge is acquired, strife is a 

 necessary and unquestionably a productive element. Burning ques- 

 tions arise wherever and whenever scientific investigation bears, or 

 appears to bear, on practical action. Eventually they find their 

 solution ; but in the meantime it is almost impossible for those who 

 are immediately concerned in discussing them to guard against the 

 influence of personal antagonisms and predilections. As regards all 

 recent questions of this kind, I think that I am myself in a position 

 to look at them from a distance, for I have had no direct concern 

 with cholera since 1866. I will therefore ask the reader to regard 

 me neither as a contagiouist nor as a localist, and to dismiss the 

 " comma-bacillus " from his mind until we have had time to take a 

 general view of the tendencies which this great world plague has 

 manifested in its dealings with mankind since it first found its way 

 into Euroi3e. 



It is agreed by all authorities that cholera is native in India, and 

 particularly in the district where it is now " endemic " — namely, in the 

 district which corresponds roughly to the deltas of the Gauges and 

 Brahmaputra and the district of Cuttack. As, however, it for the 

 most part confined its ravages to the native populations, with whom 

 at that time our relations were much less direct and intimate than 

 they are now, it excited no general interest, and was indeed so little 

 known to medical men that when in 1817 the disease broke out at 

 Jessore, near Calcutta, it was believed to be an entirely new malady. 

 Even now there are some writers who speak of Jessore as the " cradle 

 of cholera " and the year 1817 as the starting-point of its history, 

 notwithstanding that the enquiries which were then initiated showed 

 not only that in Bengal the disease was an annual visitor, but that 

 in Calcutta itself it was fatally prevalent in the native town several 

 weeks before Dr. Tytler was called to see the first case at Jessore. 



The great epidemic of 1817 and 1818 was distinguished from 

 previous ones by its extent and destructiveness, but chiefly by the 

 circumstance that in this year it became for the first time a serious 

 obstacle to English conquest. How or when it began it is probably 

 impossible to determine, for evidence exists of its presence in July 

 1817 within a few weeks at places so distant from one another as 

 Patna and Dacca. Two months later it was at Benares, Allahabad, 

 Vol. XI. (No. 79.) u 



