284 
NATURE 
[ Feb. 13, 1873 
Board, which now concerns itself with matters of this 
class. The inspector, Dr. Thorne, found that the place 
had been remarkably healthy until the potential cause, or 
infection, of the fever was conveyed to it by this chance 
visitant ; but that it was most cunningly and elaborately 
prepared to receive and energise the deadly influence 
when once it came in the way. About one-third of the 
town stands upon the porous gravel of the alluvial bed of 
the river Test, and into this gravel, side by side, shallow 
wells were dug, to furnish the place with water, and pits 
were hollowed forthe reception of ali kinds of refuse 
filth and exuvize incident to the conditions of life obtain- 
ing with a town community. Special care seems to have 
been taken to place the wells at a somewhat lower level 
than the pits containing the sources of pollution, when- 
ever this was possible, as if to make sure that the 
liquid refuse should run into the reservoirs of the 
water ; and in a few road-drains that had been laid down 
in the streets, commodious catch-pits were provided, to 
serve as traps and lurking-places for the offensive waste. 
Piggeries and small manure-yards were profusely scat- 
tered through the streets; and when once the enteric 
disorder had appeared, in order that it might have the 
fairest possible field for its operations, it became in some 
instances the practice to put ‘sound people to bed with 
relatives actually suffering fromthe fever. In the case of 
Whitchurch, it amounts almost to a demonstration that 
the bowel discharges of the chance visitant from Basing- 
stoke, containing the poison of enteric fever, must have 
been passed immediately into the water that was pro- 
vided for the general service of the town; and that an 
exhaustless supply of the particular pabulum that is re- 
quired for the elaboration of fresh quantities of the poison 
for the propagation of the malady, was kept ready on 
hand with the poison and the water. Enteric fever 
came by chance to the neighbourhood of Whitchurch ; 
but, once there, it cannot be said that it made itself at 
home, and spread through the houses of the community 
by chance. The most elaborate provision had been made 
in the township to secure for it an easy resting-place, 
and a ready path of dissemination. 
These cases of actual occurrence were happily selected 
by the Gresham Professor of Physic as the text of his 
discourse, because they aptly illustrate the value of the 
popularisation of information of this class, a result which 
it is the object of the Gresham College to insure. In the 
fever outbreak at Whitchurch, enlarged upon by Dr. 
Thompson, and from which something like every four- 
teenth member of the community was infected more or 
less gravely before the plague was stayed, nothing could 
be more clear than that the lodgment and seed-bed of 
the pestilence was prepared for it by human agency, but 
of course in entire ignorance of the dreadful work that 
was being performed. It is scarcely possible to believe 
that, if any single member of the constituted “ nuisance 
authority” and “sewer authority” of Whitchurch had ever 
been present at the Gresham College when a lecture upon 
infectious and contagious disease had been delivered by 
the Gresham Professor of Physic in its theatre, there 
would have been an eight-months-long prevalence of 
enteric fever in the town. 
The obvious, and indeed only certain, cure for evils of 
this character is the spread of sound information regard- 
ing matters that affect, and physically influence, health 
and disease, and the enlightenment of public opinion. 
The inhabitants of Whitchurch were the only people in 
this case who could’ possibly have been the efficient 
guardians of their own well-being. 
Dr. Thompson designedly touched lightly upon the 
precise nature of the seed-germs of contagion ; he satisfied 
himself upon this occasion by pressing home to the 
ordinary understanding, the great and incontrovertible 
fact, that diseases of this character, which sometimes 
decimate crowded communities, and which at all times levy 
ee 
ee eee 
a heavy tax upon human vigour and life, are caused and 
spread by influences which are well known to human 
intelligence, and largely within the sphere of human 
governance and control. Each form of infectious fever 
has its own characteristic habit and idiosyncrasy. Enteric 
fever and cholera tend chiefly to disseminate themselves 
through water, passing into the wells and fountains of 
daily supply, and at times travelling from house to house 
in the milk-cans of the easy-conscienced dairyman. Scarlet 
fever hybernates in a drawer, and after long months of 
seclusion comes forth with some old and cast-aside 
garment to be thrown with it round the throat or head of 
some new victim, and so to start thence upon a fresh 
career. Typhus fever crawls sluggishly almost fron hand 
to hand and mouth to mouth, and is immensely sociable 
and companionable in its spirit, languishing away when 
condemned to solitary confinement. Typhoid fever 
generates itself where filth, overcrowding, and impure 
habits of life prevail; and relapsing fever glides in the 
track of privation and misery. But the entire band of 
the ruthless co-fraternity agreein their subordination to 
known laws, ana controllable conditions. 
The beneficent influences and allies upon which humar 
intelligence draws in dealing as efficiently and successfully 
as it now can with the work of controlling these evil 
ministrants, are, in the main, careful isolation of the 
sick; the preservation of the water from which daily 
supplies are derived in uncontaminated purity; the un- 
interrupted ventilation alike of hospitals and dwelling- 
houses, and fresh air; the immediate removal from the 
vicinity of active human life of all material contami- 
nations that issue from the bodies of the sick, and the 
destruction of their morbific influence and energy by 
mixing them with antiseptic and disinfecting chemical 
agents such as carbolic acid, sulphuric acid, chlorides of 
lime and zinc, permanganate of potash, and charcoal; the 
preservation of the vital forces and resisting powers of the 
living frame by a well-ordered temperate rule of life, and 
avoidance of any undue indulgence in any kind of excess ; 
and above all things the cultivation of an intelligent 
and ever enlarging familiarity with the great material 
conditions of nature that have been made the means of 
working out the marvellous arrangements and operations 
of civilised human life. 
In considering the influence and powers of the various 
health-preserving chemical substances that are spoken of 
as antiseptics and disinfectants, it should be understood 
that agents of the character of carbolic acid, which are 
properly antiseptics, operate mainly by arresting the 
progress of fermentation and decomposition, while agents 
of the nature of Condy’s fluid (permanganate of potash), 
chloride of lime, and especially charcoal, which are 
properly disinfectants, act by absorbing the noxious 
products of decomposition. Dr. Thompson very prettily 
illustrated this part of his subject by stopping the gradual 
evolution of bubbles of gas from a fermenting solution of 
sugar by adding to it a few drops of carbolic acid, and by 
showing that any drinking water that contains a hurtful 
trace of the rotten egg gas, sulphuretted hydrogen, imme- 
diately discharges the beautiful violet colour of Condy’s 
disinfecting fluid. But his most telling illustration was 
the mortal remains of a defunct rat which he presented to 
his audience {enshrined in a glass jar, and simply em- 
balmed in charcoal. This rat was placed in the jar 
with the charcoal, at the termination of its natural life, 
some six or eight years ago; and from that time to this 
has been kept in the laboratory of Charing Cross Hos- 
pital for the greater part of the time with only a light 
paper cover over the jar. At the present time there 
remains of the rat’s organism only the bones and a few 
hairs. But throughout the lengthened period of decom- 
position, no trace of disagreeable smell was at any time 
emitted. All gaseous products of decay were at once 
seized, and held by the charcoal. 
