53Q 



NA TURE 



[Sept. 27, 1883 



appreciatively reviewed in our columns (vol. x., p. 119) by 

 the then greatest authority on the subject, the late Prof. 

 Clerk Maxwell, so that it is unnecessary for us to analyse 

 it here. Few of the readers of the recently published 

 biography of Maxwell can have forgotten the humorous 

 but accurately expressive lines in which he alludes to 

 this work : — 



"And just as that living Plato, whom foreigners nickname Plateau, 

 Drops oil in his whiskey and water — for foreigners sweeten it so : — 

 Each drop keeps apart from the other, inclosed in a flexible skin, 

 Till touched by the gentle emotion evolved by the prick of a pin," &c. 



When we look at the Royal Society's Catalogue, we find 

 that up to 1873 Plateau is credited with fifty-three papers 

 on subjects of the most varied character. One large sec- 

 tion of these, of course, forms the matter of the volumes 

 already mentioned. Another large section is devoted to 

 the persistence of visual impressions, subjective impres- 

 sions of colour, irradiation, and other questions of 

 physiological optics. In connection with these, there are 

 several controversies and reclamations, with and against 

 authorities such as Chevreul and von Helmholtz. In 

 these contests, it must be confessed that Plateau usually 

 has the worse. In fact, he appears very much in the same 

 light as did Brewster a little earlier. He furnished to 

 others, who knew how to interpret and to use them, a 

 great array of novel facts : but his strength lay mainly in 

 the patience and ingenuity which led him to these facts ; 

 not in the power of interpreting, explaining, or general- 

 ising them. 



Besides the two main subjects above mentioned, we 

 find in Plateau's repertoire a number of curiosities taken 

 from widely different branches of science. Thus we have 

 a chemical analysis of the mineral waters of Spa ; the 

 geometrical problem of describing an equilateral triangle 

 whose several corners shall be on three given circles in 

 one plane ; arithmetical recreations ; photometry ; the 

 " ghosts " produced by various series of rotating spokes ; 

 and a centrifugal air-pump. 



Plateau occupied with success, until practically disabled, 

 the Chair of Physics in the University of Ghent ; and, if 

 he did not attain to the foremost rank among experimental 

 physicists, he at least did much good and useful work 

 under circumstances which would have effectually closed 

 the career of many men who have been more successful 

 than he. He was occupied in his later years in compiling 

 a valuable catalogue of all the papers he could meet 

 with which bore on his special optical inquiries. It is to 

 be hoped that the as yet unpublished part of this collec- 

 tion has been left in a state approaching completion. 



OFFICIAL REPORTS ON CHOLERA IN EGYPT 



CURGEON-GENERJiL HUNTER, who was com- 

 v -' missioned by the Government to make inquiry as 

 to the circumstances attending the cholera epidemic in 

 Egypt, has sent two reports to the foreign Office. Neither 

 pretends to afford full information on the subject which 

 has been under investigation, but the more recent one, 

 which gives information up to August 19, supplies some 

 indication as to the opinion Dr. Hunter has formed with 

 regard to the etiology of the epidemic. In his first report 

 Dr. Hunter gives the cholera deaths registered up to 

 July 31 as 12,600, but he adds that, owing to defective 

 regUtration, the total mortality will probably be found to 

 have been nearly double that number. Since that date 

 some 15,000 more deaths have been registered, and if the 

 same faulty system of registration has been maintained, 

 the total mortality up to the present date cannot have 

 fallen far short of some S5,ooo. The inquiry undertaken 

 by Dr. Hunter relates therefore to a matter of the greatest 

 magnitude, the more so as Egypt has apparently been 

 free from cholera ever since 1865. It is however pre- 

 cisely this question of immunity from cholera that will be 

 raised by Dr. Hunter, and already we are able to gather 

 what opinion will be expressed on this point. 



Thus, the possibility of the importation of the disea e 

 into Egypt from India is discussed, and it is stated that 

 even some of those who originally were firmly convinced 

 of this method of origin have been forced to a different 

 conclusion. The spontaneous origin of the contagium is 

 also regarded as not being supported by facts ; and Dr. 

 Sierra, in a communication which is appended to Dr. 

 Hunter's, distinctly asserts that such a generation of the 

 infection in the Nile Delta cannot be regarded as prove I 

 merely because the choleraic germ is often produced at 

 the mouth of the Ganges. Prominence is, however, given 

 to the fact that Egypt has been visited by five epidemics 

 since that of 1831, namely, in 1S48, 1850, 1855, 1865, and 

 1883, and independent testimony is brought forward to 

 show that during the early part of the present year, as 

 also at occasional intervals since 1865, there have been 

 cases of a disease known as " cholerine," which have 

 been characterised by some of the symptoms of true 

 cholera. And further, Dr. Hunter, in expressing an 

 opinion as to these cases, says that he has arrived at the 

 conclusion that many of them were " what in India we 

 should call cholera." 



A further step in the argument is embodied in a 

 description of the filthy conditions under which the 

 Egyptians live, and especially of the foul state of the Nile 

 at Damietta and other places, both owing to the floating 

 carcasses of animals who had died of bovine typhus and 

 otherwise. Having regard to all these points, the report 

 implies that a number of cases, which for the moment we 

 may describe as sporadic cholera, have formed a some- 

 what continuous series of attacks ever since the 1865 

 outbreak, and that the potency of the infection for spread 

 in an epidemic form was developed under the influence 

 of the foul conditions which obtained immediately ante- 

 cedent to the date of the last epidemic. This view is by 

 no means a new one ; it was specially dealt with in a 

 series of papers which were brought before the Epidemio- 

 logical Society in 1878, when the possibility of a "pro- 

 gressive development of the property of infectiveness " 

 under favourable conditions was insisted on ; and it is 

 more than probable that, as regards some of the infectious 

 diseases, it may turn out to be a true explanation of their 

 origin. 



It must, however, be borne in mind that in England, 

 and indeed in all thickly peopled countries, cases which 

 are clinically of a similar character constantly occur 

 during the warmer months of the year ; indeed, the term 

 " English cholera" is of by no means infrequent occur- 

 rence in our mortality tables. And not only so, but Dr. 

 Sierra, in arguing against the spontaneous development 

 of the contagium under the conditions which were found 

 at Damietta, says that the same " cosmo-tellurie con- 

 ditions " have appeared often enough at the mouth of the 

 Nile, that the same accumulation of carcasses in the river 

 has before now taken place, and yet that no cholera has 

 broken out in Egypt. The evidence mainly neede 1 

 with a view to support the theory which is foreshadowed 

 in Dr. Hunter's reports, should go to point out what were 

 the peculiar conditions which, during the past summer, 

 led to the development of a special potency for mischief 

 in a disease which is always more or less present. The 

 subject is one of the greatest scientific interest, and we 

 trust it will be fully dealt with in the final report. 



NORDENSKJULD'S GREENLAND EXPE- 

 DITION 



BARON NORDENSKJOLD telegraphed as follows 

 to the Tidies from Thurso on Friday night : — "An 

 inland ice party started on July 4 from Auleitswik Fjord. 

 When they were 140 kilometres east of the glacier border 

 and 5000 feet above the tea level they were prevented by 

 soft snow from proceeding with sledges. They sent the 

 Laplanders further on snowshoes. These advanced 230 



