CHOLERA IN EELATION TO CERTAIN PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 



A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS THE SPECIAL ENQUIRY SANCTIONED BY THE RIGHT HON. 

 THE SECRETARIES OF STATE FOR WAR AND FOR INDIA.* 



T. E. LEWIS, M.B., AND D. D. CUNNIXGHAM, M.B. 



INTEODUCTION. 



THE RELATION OF SOIL TO DISEASE. 



The question of the influence of conditions of the soil on the prevalence of cholera 

 has been for some years the subject of special enquiry in this country, and the 

 primary object of the present report is to show what the results of this 

 investigation have been up to the present time. The varying conditions of the soil 

 are, however, so intimately associated with meteorological conditions in the ordinary 

 sense of the term — the two sets of phenomena acting and re-acting on one 

 another mutually — that, when the subject was entered upon, it was found impossible 

 to leave the latter out of consideration, and the enquiry has therefore been made 

 a more or less general one into the physical conditions of localities, associated with 

 the seasonal prevalence of cholera in them. ^ 



That the prevalence of cholera in any locality is more or less affected by the 

 coincident meteorological and other physical conditions is generally admitted by the 

 adherents of all theories regarding the essential cause of the disease, but comparatively 

 little has been done to investigate the actual relation which the phenomena bear to 

 one another. It is true that the special committee for scientific enquiries appointed 

 by the Board of Health in 1854 included the subject in its meteorological aspect 

 among the matters for investigation, and that more recently the questions of the 

 relation of wind, of soil, and of rain-fall to cholera have been discussed by various 

 authorities, such as Drs. von Pettenkofer, Macpherson, Bryden and Macnamara, but 

 in spite of this there is still abundant room for close enquiry. This is in part due 

 to the fact that most of those who have considered the matter at all have, to 



* Appeared as an Appendix to the Thirteenth Aiumal Report of the Sanitary Commissioner with tfie 

 Government of India, 1878. 



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