158 REPORT — 1855. 



causes of the disease, and watched and treated immediatel}' on the first symptoms 

 showing themselves. 



The author referred to the Reports of the London Board of Health, as furnishing 

 statistical evidence of the importance of this precaution. They had information as 

 to 1691 persons taken into such Houses of Refuge from rooms where there were 

 patients in cholera, of whom only 33 became affected with cholera, and 10 died. 

 He had himself been informed, in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, and in Oxford, of 1010 

 persons, during different epidemics, admitted from rooms where the disease existed, 

 into such Houses of Refuge, of whom 40 took the disease, and 15 died; and 

 comparing these statements with the accounts furnished at various places where the 

 disease had shown itself, and such precautions had not been taken, or were not 

 availed of by the people concerned, he considered the statistical evidence of the 

 usefulness of this precaution against the formation of " tainted districts," as quite 

 conclusive. 



He stated further, that he had great hopes of the successful application of statis- 

 tical evidence to establish the proposition lately made the subject of experiment in 

 Germany, in consequence of a conjecture first hazarded by Liebig, and which, if 

 established, would go far to explain all the strange anomalies as to the extension of 

 this disease; viz. that this virus, like the Cadaveric poison, exciting erythematic inflam- 

 mation already noticed, or the Sausage poison, from which a great mortality has 

 been witnessed on different occasions in Germany, is developed during the decom- 

 position probably of the rice-water stools in cases of cholera, but only during a 

 certain stage, or during a certain mode of this decomposition, perhaps especially in 

 dry air, and disappears when the putrefaction has reached a certain stage, or when 

 it is taking place in some other mode. He referred to the curious experiments of 

 M. Thiersch at Munich (Medical Times and Gazette, Nov. 25, 1854), made on 

 mice, with whose food very minute portions of this matter from the intestines of 

 cholera patients, dried and afterwards dissolved in water, were mixed, with the 

 effect of producing the usual symptoms of cholera — poisoning in 30 of 34, and death 

 in 12 of these, provided that the matter used was taken during days from the second 

 to the ninth after its separation from the body of the patient, but not if taken during 

 the first or after the ninth day. A repetition of this experiment he thought would 

 be adequate to establishing this proposition statistically ; and he referred also to 

 observations by Dr. Budd, in letters published in the 'Association Medical Journal' 

 from October 1854 to March 1855, especially his third letter, as affording strong 

 ground for the belief that the usual mode of communication is simply by healthy 

 persons using the same privies or close stools as the sick ; and that the diffusion of 

 the disease in certain places in England had been preven:2d by simple precautions 

 for isolating the first patients affected with cliolera in this respect, and especially 

 where pains were taken, by the use of chlorides or otherwise, effectually to destroy 

 the matters passed from their bowels during the disease within a few hours after 

 their being passed. 



Lastly, the author referred to numerous statistical proofs collected by himself and 

 others, of the influence of the great social disease, poverty, on the health of all 

 nations, and particularly on the extension of epidemic continued fever ; and espe- 

 cially the Reports of the Irish Poor Law Commissioners, and of the Board of 

 Supervision in Scotland, the former published since 1848, the latter since 1845, in 

 proof, so far as the statistical experience of laws in force only since those years can 

 go in establishing principles, that the apprehensions so strongly stated by Dr. 

 Chalmers and others, as to the injurious effects on the character of a people, there- 

 fore on their numbers, and ultimately on their destitution itself, to be expected from 

 any attempts to render their legal provision against destitution effective, are quite 

 unnecessary ; simply because statistical facts in this inquiry, as well as others, have 

 shown that the prudential motive rightly stated by Mr. Malthus and others as the 

 true check to population, is more truly effectual in people who are protected from 

 the extremity of destitution, than in those whose characters are brutalized by priva- 

 tions. 



The facts stated in official Reports by the Board of Supervision in Scotland, and 

 in the Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners in Ireland, which he regards as the 

 most valuable in this view, are — 



