254 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY. 
SOME FACTS ABOUT CHOLERA. 
Medical men are not very well agreed about the origin of cholera epidemics, 
and are still less in harmony in their application of remedies. But by common 
consent few diseases are more severe, or more quickly and surely fatal, than 
cholera. Efforts have been made to establish a connection between its appear- 
ance and the recurrence every twelve years of great Hindoo pilgrimages and 
festivals, and the writer of a learned article in a popular cyclopedia, published 
some years ago, went so far as to predict visits from this plague in 1877 and 1879. 
These prophecies were not fulfilled. The truth of the matter seems to be that 
the exciting causes of cholera are always active in some parts of India, in the 
Philippine Islands, and in other far eastern countries, and that the methods of 
commerce prevailing nowadays are most favorable for disseminating the pestilence 
throughout the world. Its ravages have been extensive and almost constant for 
at least two years in the regions of its origin, and it has now broken out in Egypt, 
and possibly also at Gibraltar and London. There is much reason to believe that 
it will appear before many months in every country of Europe, and in this country 
also. 
It is now generally held that cholera is not, strictly speaking, " contagious." 
that is to say, it is not spread by touch, pure and simple. Its seeds, in order to 
do their work, must be introduced into the system through the lungs or the 
the stomach. The most frequent means of their spread is the use of contaminated 
water. Some authorities, indeed, go so far as to say that all the most virulent 
epidemics have been connected with the pollution of drinking water by choleraic 
evacuations, and that there is but little danger of a very extensive outbreak of 
the disease in any city where the drinking water is originally pure, and is con- 
veyed in close and clean pipes. It seems, however, that the infecting matter in 
the discharges from the bowels of those who have the disease is apt to be diffused 
through the air or become attached to clothing, and thus to find entrance into 
the lungs of healthy persons. 
It is still undetermined whether the morbid material that constitutes the cholera 
poison is a parasitic germ or a miasm. And no one professes to know how the 
poison is generated, or why it tends to spread more widely at some times than at 
others, or how the presence of decomposing matter and certain conditions of 
climate and soil, and certain physical characteristics of individuals, favor its dis- 
tribution. The disease, in short, is known only in its effects. 
The thing to be done, therefore, is to take heed to the conditions under 
which fatal effects are most likely to be produced, and to see to it that the poison- 
