284 NATURE AND LIFE. 



are always more or fewer sick ones to be found, necessa- 

 rily transport the seeds of the plague. The Crimean War 

 afforded many proofs of this ; on that occasion it was our 

 troops that imported the cholera into the East. The fol- 

 lowing fact is peculiarly instructive : the Bosquet division, 

 affected with cholera, pitched camp at Baltchick the 9th of 

 August, where a great part of our squadron, till then ex- 

 empt, was anchored. At the end of ten days it was at- 

 tacked, and in less than a week it counted more than eight 

 hundred dead in an effective force of thirteen thousand sail- 

 ors. If further instances were needed, we might mention 

 also the introduction of the cholera in 1865 at Guadeloupe. 

 The labors of Marshal de Calvi and of a skillful surgeon in 

 our navy, Pellarin, prove that the cholera was brought into 

 Pointe-a-Pitre by the ship Sainte-Marie, equipped at Bor- 

 deaux the 14th of September, 1865, cleared the same day for 

 Matamoras, in Mexico, and touching at Pointe-a-Pitre the 

 20th of the following October. 



On the whole, it is certain that the cholera travels from 

 one country to another by the change of place of masses 

 of human beings, which are true moving centres. It regu- 

 larly follows the great channels of communication, frequent- 

 ed roads, navigable rivers, etc. Whether the question is 

 as to pilgrims in India, caravans in upper Asia and Eastern 

 Russia, armies crossing the Caucasus, or in our Crimean 

 expedition, immigrants in America, or Moslem pilgrims to 

 Mecca, the conditions of transmissibility of the epidemic 

 are still the same, its propagation is always more rapid 

 in proportion as the means of communication are more 

 speedy. 



How does a human being transport the cholera ? The 

 question is not completely settled. Some believe that the 

 epidemic germs are planted in the organism itself, and 

 there preserve their vitality. Others, as Pettenkofer, who 

 has published remarkable essays on this subject, suppose 



