280 NATURE AND LIFE. 



the germs of the cholera will be found to circulate after 

 this with surprising celerity. 



Between the years 1837 and 1847, Europe, freed from 

 the cholera, cared very little about it ; but physicians, who 

 followed with a watchful eye the movement of diseases on 

 the surface of the globe, still felt the fear of an earlier or 

 later return of the Asiatic scourge. An epidemic which 

 had ravaged the Burman Empire in 1842, and Afghanistan 

 and Tartary next, had reached Persia toward the end of 

 1845. Thence it took its course in two different directions, 

 from east to west by way of Bagdad and Mecca, and on the 

 north toward Tauris and the Caucasian provinces. In the 

 early part of 1847 the cholera broke out in the west of the 

 Caucasus among the ranks of the Russian army then keep- 

 ing the field in Circassia, and by slow degrees it reached 

 the rest of Europe. Thus on the 5th of October, 1848, a 

 vessel coming from Hamburg with sailors aboard affected 

 with cholera landed at Sunderland ; on the 24th of that 

 month a part of Great Britain was infected ; on the 20th 

 of the same month, immediately after an English ship had 

 come into port at Dunkirk, the disease made its appearance 

 in the north of France; Lille, Calais, Fecamp, Dieppe, 

 Rouen, Douai, in succession suffered the attack of the 

 scourge. The 29th of January, in 1849, immediately after 

 the arrival of a battalion of infantry-chasseurs coming from 

 Douai, the first case of cholera was noted at St.-Denis. On 

 the 7th of March the plague was at Paris. 



Those two epidemics of which we have spoken were 

 thus of direct Asiatic origin. The same thing could hardly 

 be said of that which raged in Europe from 1852 to 1855 ; 

 at least the track of no epidemic was followed marking a 

 progress from east to west and from south to north. This 

 visitation, after having prevailed without much violence in 

 Bohemia about the end of 1851, displays itself with sudden 

 and remarkable intensity, in the month of May, 1852, in 



