294 Professor J. Burdon Sanderson [May 15, 



along the Baltic coast, reacliing London and Liverpool in July, but 

 not becoming epidemic until the following year. 



After a dozen years of immunity,- cholera again appeared in Europe 

 in 1865. On this occasion it was generally believed that the pesti- 

 lence reached Europe, not as before by the Caspian and Black Sea, 

 but by the Mediterranean. There is no doubt that cholera was rife 

 at Jedda and Mecca in the spring of 1865, also that it prevailed from 

 the beginning of June in Alexandria, and appeared in Malta on the 

 20th of that month, and about the same time at Marseilles, and 

 subsequently on the Coast of Spain (Valencia). As was the case last 

 summer, the seed was conveyed to Paris, and on that occasion bore 

 fruit in the deaths of about 7000 persons in five months. There 

 was also, as many readers will remember, a small epidemic at South- 

 ampton, the origin of which was traced by Dr. Parkes to the arrival 

 of ships with cholera on board from Alexandria ; but with this excep- 

 tion Western Europe remained free until the following year. Nor 

 in all probability would England have ever suffered as it did in 1866, 

 had the sporadic spread of cholera from the Mecca pilgrims been 

 our only risk. At the time that all these events were going on 

 about the Mediterranean a new storm was brewing in the old quarter 

 — in North Germany. The appearance of cholera on August 29, 

 1865, at Altenburg, a place situated in the very middle of Germany, 

 was one of the strangest events which is on record in relation to 

 cholera in Europe. The epidemic in that district, which is exclu- 

 sively watered by tributaries of the Elbe, lasted for four months 

 (i.e. until the very middle of winter), culminating in October, and 

 destroying 500 people. All of these deaths occurred in some half- 

 dozen towns lying to the southward of Leipsic. This was followed 

 by a general dissemination of cholera in Germany. By July 1866 

 it was already at London and Liverpool. The Prussians in their 

 march into Bohemia passed through the country that had been the 

 seat of the epidemic in the previous year, and on their return from 

 their short but victorious campaign encountered it at Halle and 

 Leipsic, in which places by that time it had gained headway, and 

 suffered so severely that more soldiers' lives were lost by cholera 

 than by the weapons of the Austrians. Since 1866 we in England 

 have again had a long period of immunity, notwithstanding that we 

 have been repeatedly threatened. In Germany a succession of epi- 

 demics occurred between 1873 and 1875, none of which reached 

 England. Although these, from the completeness with which they 

 were investigated, afford materials for a very instructive study of the 

 subject, I must for the present content myself with the sketch already 

 given of the epidemics which have affected this country.* It may, 

 perhaps, suffice to enable the reader to see that in these successive 



* See Gunther, ' Die indische Cholera in Sachsen im Jahre 18G5,' Leipzig, 

 1866; and Pettenkofer, 'Die Sachsischen CLolera-Epidemien des Jahrcs 1865.' 

 Ztsch. f. Biol., 1866. 



