320 B. SCHWARZBACH. 
which ports a brisk trade is carried on with Hamburg, were the 
doors through which the Comma bacillus was introduced to a soil 
most congenial to its further development. 
What must have struck the intelligent observer of the nature 
of the epidemic most keenly, was the fact, that in our time of 
advanced science, in which we take every opportunity of boasting 
about the supreme hygienic means at our command aided by 
microscopical discoveries, the spread of a disease, the nature of 
which is well understood, could have been so terribly quick and 
extensive. If we hear that in one Persian town sixty thousand 
people have died of cholera during the month of September, we are 
perhaps not over astonished because we consider the primitive 
state of medical advancement amongst the Mahomedans, the 
religious fatalism of the race, and the dirt of their abodes. But 
when we hear that in a highly civilised country, like Germany, 
eight thousand persons have died within seven weeks in a city, 
which had, or ought to have had all the modern appliances of 
science at its disposal, we then come to the conclusion that the so- 
much-praised advance of prophylactic science is not so efficient, 
as it is said to be. The only advance which has manifested itself 
during the last epidemic (and I admit it is a great advance) is the 
diminishing of the percentage of mortality. During the rage of 
cholera in 1866 from 50 to 65% of the patients died, whereas in 
the year 1892 only—only !—427/. 
But after all, it may not have been the ineffectiveness of hygienic 
measures, but the absence of the same, which created such 
havoc at Hamburg. Let us consider, how it happened, that the 
cholera, as an epidemio, kept hovering over Hamburg alone, with- 
out spreading to any extent sideways. It was well known to the 
inhabitants of that town, that the drinking water with which they 
were supplied, is at times not in such a pure state as it should be. 
Occasionally, especially after much rain,—water from the river 
Elbe finds its way, by some means or other, into the cisterns 
which supply the daily wants of the people. The danger of this — 
has often engrossed the attention of the city fathers, and efforts 
