NOTES ON RECENT CHOLERA EPIDEMIC IN GERMANY. 319 
which at first prevailed throughout Germany, however soon 
subsided, as the local nature of the epidemic manifested itself. 
In the beginning of August 1892 no marked sign of the malig- 
nant disease was noticable in any of the European countries, 
except in Russia. True, a few isolated cases had appeared in 
Paris, Havre, and Antwerp, but it was at that time asserted that 
these cases were not of the Asiatic type, but Cholera nostras. 
Suddenly, August 20th, the telegraph flashed the notice into the 
world, that a serious outbreak of genuine cholera had taken place 
at Hamburg, and that some dozen of patients had died. It seems 
to have taken the city authorities some days to ascertain the true 
nature of the symptoms. On the 22nd of August eighty-nine 
fresh cases were recorded, and on the 27th already eight hundred 
and seven cases had occurred. During the seven weeks the 
epidemic raged at Hamburg, there were—to give round numbers— 
eighteen thousand patients, of whom seven thousand six hundred 
died. Hamburg is, next to Berlin, the largest city in Germany, 
with about half a million inhabitants. If cholera had appeared 
in the same proportion in London, about one hundred and seventy 
thousand cases with eighty thousand deaths would have been 
recorded in that city. No wonder, therefore, that for a few days 
consternation reigned supreme and that in the beginning the 
weapons to battle against the enemy were inadequate. However, 
after the second week most vigorous measures were adopted, the 
effectiveness of which was proved by the rigid decrease of the 
number of fresh cases, so that nearly as suddenly as it had appeared 
the cholera vanished again. 
It probably will never be known, in what manner the malignant 
germ had been introduced into the town ; whether by the wooden 
freight boats, which have travelled during many weeks from the 
Russian frontier by the river Weichsel; if emigrants from 
Russia, passing through Hamburg, have been the cause ; or if 
some steamers with an Indian crew, hailing from Calcutta (where 
cases of Asiatic cholera appear the whole year round) have been 
the offenders. It may have been that Antwerp or Havre, with 
