282 NATURE AND LIFE. 



victims were counted there. The panic that seized the 

 inhabitants brought on a considerable emigration, which 

 was directed to the great commercial towns of the Mediter- 

 ranean coasts Beyrout, Cyprus, Malta, Smyrna, Constan- 

 tinople, Trieste, and Marseilles whence the cholera could 

 easily extend into the rest of Europe. In the former epi- 

 demics the disease, traveling by land, took years to pass 

 over difficult routes. This time, brought over the sea by 

 steam, it needed but a few months to become mistress of 

 Europe. 



To sum up, four great epidemics may be counted up to 

 this time in France, those of 1832, 1849, 1854-'55, and, last, 

 that of 1865, which continued more than two years. The 

 invasion of 1832 attacks fifty-six departments, and de- 

 stroys during the year from a hundred and ten to a hun- 

 dred and twenty thousand victims; in 1849, the plague 

 ravages fifty -seven departments, and causes from a hun- 

 dred to a hundred and ten thousand deaths ; the epidemic 

 in 1854 gradually extends to seventy departments, and de- 

 stroys over one hundred and fifty thousand people ; that 

 of 1865 begins in the month of June, rages for some time 

 at Marseilles and Toulon, does not reach Paris till several 

 months later, revives there during the following summer, 

 lingers through the winter in the northwest of France, and 

 only disappears completely at the end of 1867, after having 

 ravaged less territory, and produced a smaller mortality, 

 than the former epidemics did. 1 



If science has succeeded in tracing with some exactness 

 the geographical advance of the symptoms of cholera, it 

 has hitherto been powerless in fixing the real relations of 

 that disease with the totality of conditions of climate, 

 geology, society, etc. The many and diligent researches 

 undertaken upon this subject have as yet yielded only ques- 



1 The mortality occasioned by this epidemic in France is not yet quite 

 ascertained. In Paris alone more than six thousand fell victims to it. 



