276 Tum Mrcroscopr. — 
of August, there were reported four hundred and fifty cases per 
day. The total number of cases up to the middle of September 
was 6,471, and the deaths, 5,093—over 6.5 per cent. of the popula- 
tion, against + per cent. in Madrid. No attempt was made to 
correct the water supply until the disease had become established. 
Sometimes hundreds of corpses were lying in the cemetery awaiting 
interment. The inhabitants were panic stricken and the authori- 
ties paralyzed. The course of the disease was easily followed down 
the river, the infected waters carrying death wherever used. 
No case of cholera occurred in Valencia until the middle of 
May, though in the not distant territory it had been spreading 
during the two previous years. The water used is from the river 
Turia, taken from the river three and one-half miles above the 
town. After being passed through sand filters it is stored in a 
covered reservoir whence it is conducted to the city in iron pipes. 
The water remained in a good condition until infected in the 
upper portions of the river by the spread of the disease as noted, 
when it evidently carried the disease to the city, in which the 
ravages of the disease were afterward exceedingly great. By the 
end of June the number of cases had arisen to seven hundred 
daily, the total number of cases for four months 4,234. 
Such illustrations may be indefinitely mu'tiplied, all going to 
show the primary importance of the purity of the water supply, 
whether drainage and sewerage are as they should be or not. 
Tuledo, Seville and Malaga were certainly in bad sanitary condi- 
tions, except that the water was secure from infection, and these 
towns conspicuously escaped any serious loss from cholera, while 
other towns mentioned, which were otherwise in conditions quite 
as favorable for health, suffered severely. Cities supplied with 
water from springs, and secured from contamination, were the 
freest from cholera. The information shows that dependence can- 
not be placed upon filtration of the water, as we see that at Sara- 
gossa, where charcoal filters were used, and at Valencia, where 
sand filters were used, the disease nevertheless raged as it presu- 
mably would have done without this attempt at protection. The 
only security evidently consists in obtaining waters absolutely free 
from infection, as at Seville, and, after the stringent governmental 
order, at Toledo. 
Leaving this suggestive history let us attend to a wonderful 
