59 



cholera occurring in the south districts of the metropolis, where one water com- 

 pany, the Southwark and Vauxhall, supplied water charged with London foical 

 impurities, and another company, the Lambeth, supplied a pure water, the pro- 

 portion of fatal cases to each 10,000 houses supplied by these waters was, to the 

 Southwark and Vauxhall Company's water 71; to the Lambeth 5. But there 

 was another fact of singular interest brought out by Dr. Snow during this epi- 

 demic. In the latter part of August, 1854, a terrific outbreak of cholera com- 

 menced in London in and about the neighborhood of Broad street. Golden square. 

 Within two hundred and fifty yards of the spot Avhere Cambridge street joins 

 Broad street, there were upwards of 500 fatal attacks of cholera in ten days. 

 Dr. Snow at once determined that a pump in Broad street was the source and 

 centre of the calamity. He found that a case of cholera had originally been 

 brought to an inn close by the pump ; he came to the conclusion that the sewer 

 from the inn had a connexion with the well, and that the water of the well was 

 thus directly poisoned. He i-ecommended the vestry of the parish to remove 

 the handle of the pump, whereupon the pestilence ceased to spread, and after- 

 wards, Avhen all was over, a committee of inquiry found that there was a direct 

 connexion between the sewer and the well, and that the water was impregnated 

 with the sewage from that particular public house, and with that of several ad- 

 joining houses. Another important fact was elicited in connexion with the Broad 

 street epidemic, which, if Ave were superstitious, we should say was almost inteud- 

 ' ed to prove the origin of the disorder. An old lady who had once resided in 

 Broad street had retii-ed to Hampstead. For some years, liowever, she had 

 been in the habit of sending daily to the Broad street pump for a keg of water 

 for drinking. She had never suffered before ; she drank of this water after it 

 had become impregnated with the cholera excretse, contracted cholera and died. 

 Her niece drank of the same, and also took cholera, but recovered. These were 

 the only cases that occurred in that districi;." 



The three modes of communicating the cholera here referred to are by clothing, 

 where the infected matter is dried and carried by the air into the nostrils or 

 mouth ; by uncleanliness, resulting in a similar transmission ; and by water used 

 for drinking. They serve one common purpose, to carry the germ of the dis- 

 ease from the sick to the well. We may therefore regard all possible modes of 

 such conveyance as alike fatal, whether the excretoe or passages from the sick, 

 whether by vomiting or purging, are exposed to drying winds and blown about 

 so as to be inhaled, or thrown on the surfaces of the ground, where they may 

 be washed into wells, or cast into privies, or filter through the sewerage of the 

 city into wells or springs, or carried into rivers ; all are agencies of communi- 

 cating the poison with which these excretse abound. It should be, therefore, 

 the first aim of sanitary regulations to secure these excretse and dispose of them 

 where neither the air nor the water can carry them to those in health. This is 

 done by digging trenches in a remote or safe place, and where the soil, by burn- 

 ing, or by its nature as a clay, may hold these poisonous elements. If not so 

 secured there is no guarantee of safety, because no one can determine that privies 

 or sewers have no communication with wells. Horribly disgusting as is the 

 thought that such communication can at any time exist, yet the facts stated by 

 Mr. Richardson admonish us that it is probable. Look at the sewerage of Wash- 

 ington. Its narrow channels choaked, its larger ones hastily constructed, and 

 these having wells near them. 



2. Cattle -plague. — A consideration of the agencies by which the poison of 



