CHOLERA IN 1892. 



viceroy's messenger returned with the report 

 (lint the arresl had not been made. In his letter 

 tu the (iovei'iior of Ilupeh, which was intercepted 

 I >y the British consul lit Ilinikow, Cliauhan had 

 alluded to the viceroy as a person with whom 

 lie was iii some degree intimate. The "anti- 

 heresy publications" which had caused the out- 

 11 Christians, he declared, had been dis- 

 seminated by him in concert with the officials 

 and gentry, both civil and military, who manage 

 the a n"airs of the benevolent halls. 



Si ion after this fiasco, antichristian tumults 

 broke out afresh in the Yangtse valley. In 

 Chingho the house of two ladies, who were mis- 

 sionaries of the Church of England, was attacked 

 and the ladies insulted. In Kienning the hos- 

 pital of Dr. Riggs was wrecked, and he was 

 pelted and maltreated by the mob. The woman 

 missionaries might have escaped, it was claimed. 

 and were actually urged to go by the native 

 magistrate, who sent sedan chairs and an escort 

 of soldiers, which they declined. A new Catho- 

 lic mission at Tanyang was threatened, and on 

 the demand of the French consul at Shanghai a 

 military guard was sent to protect it. Another 

 body of soldiers was dispatched to Soochow to 

 guard the missions there. The soldiers recruited 

 in Hunan were all disbanded after the riots of 

 1891 and were replaced by troops drawn from 

 Canton. The large claims made by foreign gov- 

 ernments of compensation for property destroyed 

 and citizens maltreated were referred to the 

 provincial governments by the authorities at 

 rekin. In the provinces ruled by the Viceroy 

 of Nanking, which enjoyed great prosperity, the 

 demands were complied with ; but from Hunan 

 and llupeli. where the crops had failed and where 

 the feeling against foreigners still smoldered, 

 payment could not be obtained. 



CHOLERA IN 1892. To Garcia del Huerto, 

 a celebrated physician of Goa, we are indebted 

 for the first accurate description of cholera. 

 Previous to 1560 we had no record of such a 

 disease, the literature on the subject beginning 

 with Huerto's writings at that period. Much 

 has been written since by eminent medical men 

 of all countries, and to-day we have the investi- 

 gations and writings of many experts upon the 

 subject. The time is probably not far distant 

 when we shall not only be able to treat it suc- 

 cessfully, but literally confine the dread affec- 

 tion to its home, and put an end to its travels. 

 Of all the zymotic diseases there is none that 

 promises as easy management as does cholera. 

 India is the country where cholera, endemic and 

 epidemic, is always to be found. Authorities 

 agree upon the statement that there is a certain 

 area, with somewhat indefinite limits, where 

 cholera is always in existence. It is between 

 the base of the Himalayas on the north, north- 

 ern Burmah on the enst. the Bay of Bengal on 

 the south, and the Northwestern and Central 

 Provinces on the west. In this district the 

 (Janu'es and the Brahmaputra continually breed 

 and distribute cholera germs, and here an effort 

 to kill the crerm could best be made. 



The three pathways of the disease start from 

 the above-described area that is, as far as Eu- 

 rope is concerned. The first pathway is the 

 valley of the Ganges. This leads into Afghan- 

 istan, Bokhara, Turkestan and Russia. The 



second road is by vessels through the Persian 

 Bay. and by this route into Europe. The third 

 starts again at 1 1 indostan, thence to the Arabian 

 Sea, on to the Red Sea, thence into Egypt, and 

 on to Europe by way of the Mediterranean. 

 Before the Suez Canal was completed, in 1869, 

 cholera was seldom known to take this third 

 pathway. 



When cholera assumes an epidemic form it 

 spreads westward, its journeys being made by 

 snort stages, following lines of commerce anil 

 spreading by actual contact. The routes of the 

 plague have been most accurately described in 

 several epidemics, and it has been noted that, 

 as yet, it has never been shipped aboard vessels 

 that have doubled the Cape of Good Hope. In 

 1774 cholera assumed a severe epidemic form in 

 India; again in 1817 a virulent form. This 

 outbreak marked the beginning of a march that 

 went steadily on, until almost every portion of 

 the world was reached. Russia suffered in 1830. 

 Germany in 1831, England in 1832. The first 

 case on this continent occurred in Quebec early 

 in June, 1832. The end of the same month found 

 the disease in New York city, from which place it 

 traveled westward along the Ohio river until 

 the Mississippi was reached, where it turned 

 southward and journeyed to New Orleans. This 

 diversion of its usual westward course was due 

 to the fact that the population was greater along 

 the river's course than westward. In 1846 another 

 epidemic appeared, spreading over Europe and 

 reaching America in 1849. Cholera has since vis- 

 ited us in 1852, 1866, and 1873, and a few cases 

 reached New York harbor in the autumn of 

 1886. Some writers make the bold assertion 

 that the figures showing the number of deaths 

 from the disease, from 1774 to 1891, are over a 

 million. The accuracy of such a statement is 

 open to question, as is, indeed, any compilation 

 of the kind, on account of the inaccurate state- 

 ments. But the writer of this article has col- 

 lected statistics that show more than 800,000 

 deaths up to 1891. Considering the ratio of 

 deaths to cases, this would show over a million 

 and a half of cases, and it is very probable that 

 this is below the actual number. When we 

 stop to consider the densely populated countries 

 of Europe and Asia, and the meager records we 

 possess of diseases and deaths in the past, it is 

 but fair to infer that the devastation this de- 

 stroyer has wrought upon the human race has 

 not been overestimated. 



The outbreaks of cholera are generally sud- 

 den, large numbers of people being attacked in 

 a short period. Each outbreak seems to spend 

 itself in some one particular direction, making 

 prominent some one special symptom. The 

 specific cause of cholera is now recognized as a 

 living organism, which is capable of vast multi- 

 plication and rapid propagation. Its discovery 

 is claimed by Koch, who found it to be a specific 

 micro-organism belonging to the vegetable 

 kingdom. It has its own special features, which 

 are not found to be possessed by any other plant. 

 Koch claims that a specific germ is always 

 found in the intestinal contents of persons suf- 

 fering from cholera; that this germ is found in 

 the'intestinal contents in no other disease; that 

 it has certain features distinguishable from the 

 germ of all other diseases; and that it alone can 



