636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



seven deaths, in the following week there were sixty-seven, and 

 then the mortality as quickly subsided as it had arisen. No satis- 

 factory solution of this mysterious outbreak presented itself until 

 Dr. Snow was called in to examine the water supplies. His pub- 

 lished report shows the clearly marked incidence of the disease on 

 those who drank from the parish pump. The workers in one par- 

 ticular factory where the water was always used suffered severely 

 from cholera, while those in an adjoining brewery, where the 

 water was never touched, escaped, and numerous instances of 

 fatal attacks of cholera following the use of the treacherously 

 sparkling water from this pump are detailed. On the drains of 

 the house adjoining the well being opened, it was found that 

 there was a cesspool under a common privy, within three feet of 

 the well, and at a higher level than that of the water in it ; that 

 the walls of the cesspool being rotten, the contents leaked into 

 the surrounding soil ; that the walls of the well were also rotten, 

 and that there was distinct evidence of the cesspool contents hav- 

 ing for a long time leaked into the well. Then came the startling 

 fact that in the house itself a child aged five months had died on 

 September 2d, of so-called " diarrhoea," but with distinctly chole- 

 raic symptoms. 



In 1866 England was again invaded by cholera, and that epi- 

 demic is memorable for the terrible experiment which was un- 

 consciously carried out by a water company at the expense 

 of some four thousand lives in East London. Early in the 

 outbreak I was struck by its incidence on the area supplied by 

 the East London Water Company, and I felt confident that it 

 could only be due to a sudden specific pollution of the water sup- 

 ply. Acting on behalf of a great medical journal, I dispatched 

 the late Mr. J. Netten Radcliffe — who had not then become 

 attached to the Medical Department of the Privy Council — to 

 investigate the matter. After much trouble, the result showed 

 that owing to changes having been made in their filtering appa- 

 ratus, the company had sent out for a few days unfiltered water, 

 or water in a very partially filtered state, direct from the river 

 Lee, which had just at that moment become infected with chol- 

 eraic discharges from a cottage, the sewers of which were con- 

 nected with the river, and in which a family had come to reside 

 who had reached Southampton infected with cholera and had 

 been allowed to pass on after they were supposed to have re- 

 covered. 



These things are now ancient history, and are only here re- 

 peated as an illustration of the fact that wherever a single out- 

 break can be isolated and examined separately, without the intru- 

 sion of cases of cholera from round about, the disease is seen to 

 be obviously carried to the patients' mouths by the water which 



