280 NATURE AND LIFE. 
the germs of the cholera will be found to circulate after 
this with surprising celerity. 
Between the years 1837 and 1847, Europe, freed fom 
the cholera, cared very little about it; but physicians, who 
followed with a watchful eye the eoyemens of diseases on 
the surface of the globe, still felt the fear of an earlier or 
later return of the Asiatic scourge. An epidemic which 
had ravaged the Burman Empire in 1842, and Afghanistan 
and Tartary next, had reached Persia toward the end of 
1845. Thence it took its course in two different directions, 
from east to west by way of Bagdad and Mecca, and on the 
north toward Tauris and the Caucasian provinces. In the 
early part of 1847 the cholera broke out in the west of the 
Caucasus among the ranks of the Russian army then keep- 
ing the field in Circassia, and by slow degrees it reached 
the rest of Europe. Thus on the 5th of October, 1848, a 
vessel coming from Hamburg with sailors aboard affected 
with cholera landed at Sunderland; on the 24th of that 
month a part of Great Britain was infected; on the 20th 
of the same month, immediately after an English ship had 
come into port at Dunkirk, the disease made its appearance 
in the north of France; Lille, Calais, Fécamp, Dieppe, 
Rouen, Douai, in succession suffered the attack of the 
scourge. The 29th of January, in 1849, immediately after 
the arrival of a battalion of infantry-chasseurs coming from 
Douai, the first case of cholera was noted at St.-Denis. On 
the 7th of March the plague was at Paris. 
Those two epidemics of which we have spoken were 
thus of direct Asiatic origin. The same thing could hardly 
be said of that which raged in Europe from 1852 to 1855; 
at least the track of no epidemic was followed marking a 
progress from east to west and from south to north. This 
visitation, after having prevailed without much violence in 
Bohemia about the end of 1851, displays itself with sudden 
and remarkable intensity, in the month of May, 1852, in 
