182 Miscellaneous Notices Respecting Cholera. 



of the disease or knowledge of its origin. I think the following con- 

 clusions may be relied upon as far as relates to England. The sides 

 of rivers and the vicinity of low marshy grounds were the chief seats 

 of the disease. In towns which were somewhat elevated above the 

 river level, it was chiefly in those streets that descended to the river 

 that the cholera prevailed. Chalk soils and dry sandy soils seem to 

 have been peculiarly exempt from cholera. There has not been one 

 case of Indian Cholera in the whole county of Sussex. At Hamp- 

 steadj though so near London, we had only two cases and these were 

 of persons who resided the greater part of the day in London. Hamp- 

 stead contains 8000 inhabitants, it is upon the London clay chiefly, 

 but this is much mixed with sand and we are elevated from 300 feet 

 to 350 feet above the Thames. 



Medical Geology. — At some future day, I have no doubt, that we 

 shall discover that there is such a science as medical geology, viz» 

 that certain strata are, as foundation ground for human habitations, 

 much more liable to be affected with certain causes of diseases than 

 others, and we shall probably not only know the fact, but ascertain 

 the cause and the remedy. The county of Norfolk has long been 

 famous or infamous for the astonishing number of patients affected 

 with the stone, nothing has hitherto been done to investigate the cause. 

 The earth, I have long since been persuaded, contains within itself 

 agents destined to affect future changes of the solid surface, and also 

 of the atmosphere. The pestilence and earthquake which reigned 

 together, for seventy years during the reign of Justinian, and depop- 

 ulated the fairest portion of the civilized world — were doubtless the 

 result of certain subterranean laws, which regulate its internal econo- 

 my — laws known only to its creator. 



Celestial Phenomena. — Beside the cholera, we have in Europe, 

 been terror-stricken by the comet, which passed the earth's path in Oc- 

 tober. You are, no doubt, well acquainted with Arago's popular es- 

 say on comets ; I am however by no means convinced that the chan- 

 ces of the earth or atmosphere being affected by the near approach 

 of a comet are so slight as he would have us believe. In the sec- 

 tion of the essays on the four new planets, " that move round the sun 

 in nearly the same time and distances, he agrees with other astrono- 

 mers in supposing they may all be some broken parts of one planet — 

 and that this may have been effected by a comet, or by an internal 

 explosion, but then the difficulty he says is in supposing how it should 

 happen that while three of these planets have taken a large portion of 



