ABOUT CHOLERA 239 



were removed in carts as in the days of the plague. It 

 was then that the Broad Street pump became famous, and 

 the carefully demonstrated history of a cesspool leaking 

 into the well of the pump, of the existence of a cholera 

 patient in the house to which the cesspool was attached 

 and of the infection with cholera of healthy people who 

 sent all the way from Hampstead to fetch what they 

 thought was the beautifully pure, cool, and palatable 

 water of Broad Street, St. James's, caused a most vivid 

 and salutary impression on the public mind. The " water- 

 carriage" of the cholera infection was established as a 

 fact, and the subsequent abolition of surface wells and 

 pumps, as well as of cesspools, in London and other cities 

 was the result. Indeed, the active development of sani- 

 tation and sanitary measures of all kinds in Great Britain 

 may be traced to the panic caused by the cholera in 1854 

 and to the .well-founded conviction that it was in the 

 power of the community, by the construction of sewers 

 and the provision of untainted water-supply, to protect 

 itself against such disaster in the future. 



Years passed by, and still the actual germ of cholera 

 was unknown. In India it was not even admitted that 

 its diffusion was especially connected with water-supply. 

 The methods of observing with the microscope those 

 minute swarming organisms which are called " bacteria " 

 became immensely improved. They were isolated, culti- 

 vated in purity, and the activity of a vast number of 

 different kinds of different shapes, sizes, and modes of 

 growth was ascertained. They were distinguished accord- 

 ing to their shape as bacilli, spirilla, micrococci, and so 

 on, and separate kinds were characterised one producing 

 ordinary putrefaction, another the souring of milk, an- 

 other the "cheesing" of the same fluid, another the 

 destruction of teeth and of bone, another the terrible 

 anthrax of cattle or wool-sorters' disease, another (a 



