GREAT EPIDEMICS—ASIATIC CHOLERA. 289 
birth of the miasma? Is it the crowding together of pil- 
grims under bad hygienic conditions ? Is it the putrefaction 
of vegetable matters under a torrid sun, or the stagnant 
waters of the Ganges, loaded with corpses and filth, or is 
it a special state of the soil? Wedo not know. What is 
certain is, that pilgrimages aid in propagating the cholera, 
and that it in some way seeks out a pestilential atmosphere. 
Therefore the wish is reasonable that the British Govern- 
ment should control these pilgrimages, and give greater 
activity to the labors of canal-making and the sanitary 
measures it has undertaken to render the country healthy. 
When medical savants suggest going to attack the evil at 
its root and destroy it forever, and preach a crusade to India 
in which all civilized nations should join to cut off the heads 
of the hydra, as Hercules of old did those of the Lernean 
monster, we may applaud the spirit and generosity of the 
project, but must ask what means are to be found for its 
execution. 
Persia, situated between India and Europe, is not a 
focus of cholera, but it is a country where the disease finds 
so suitable a region that it very often prevails in it. Only 
a few years ago the shah’s kingdom presented a miserable 
spectacle in this respect. Dirt and offal were not removed ; 
the bodies of animals, camels, oxen, horses, mules, were eaten 
by dogs, jackals, and birds of prey, in the towns or in their 
environs. A deeply-rooted religious belief in the country 
caused it to be regarded as a sacred duty to carry the 
dead far away and bury them in holy cemeteries. This 
transportation was performed under deplorable circum- 
stances. The bodies, already in different stages of putre- 
faction, were merely wrapped in felt cloths, seldom inclosed 
in coffins of thin, ill-jomed boards. In this state the bodies 
were carried on the backs of camels or mules, in all weathers, 
to distances averaging thirty or forty days’ march. There 
were caravans of corpses, as there are caravans of pilgrims; 
