NOTES ON RECENT CHOLERA EPIDEMIC IN GERMANY. 321 
have been made to remedy the fault. In the year 1890 the con- 
struction of very extensive waterworks was commenced, the great 
technical ditficulties of which were to terminate—just in time to ° 
be too late—in the year 1893. From the beginning the work was. 
considered to require three years for its completion. Itis a drastic 
irony of fate that the cholera itself interrupted these works, which 
were erected principally to guard against this very enemy. At 
present about one thousand workmen are daily (even on Sundays). 
engaged to hasten the completion of the great undertaking before: 
the commencement of the next hot season. 
Now, allowing that the Elbe water was undoubtedly the dis- 
tributor of the cholera germs, the—I may say—nursing of the 
same took place in those many small unwholesome back dwellings, 
in which Hamburg abounds. In the quarters of the dock- and 
whart-labourers, the peculiar, quaint style of the buildings has. 
created many corners, back-terraces, small dark yards and flats 
devoid of pure air and good light. The poverty of the occupants. 
did not permit the necessary adoption of that special hygiene: 
which the richer people consider all-important for their daily 
necessities. Of course, to day, after a leg, or many legs have been 
broken over the stone on the bridge, the stone will be removed — 
however too late for those who have come to grief by falling over: 
it. But as no wind is said to beso bad that it may not carry some. 
good, so will the late calamity at Hamburg change for the better: 
the life-condition of the poor in that city. The whole country 
will watch with a critical eye the fufilment of these conditions. 
Another advantage in the abstract, caused by the epidemic,. 
must be considered in the thoroughness with which every part of 
the German Empire has been cleansed and disinfected. In large- 
and small towns, in country places, at railway stations—every 
backyard, every corner has been “treated ” according to law and 
private inclinations. The smell of carbolic acid, tar, and sulphur- 
was noticeable everywhere, when travelling from Hamburg to. 
Konigsberg or from the Baltic to the Bodensee. It may be that 
this wholesale sweeping and cleansing has helped much to prevent. 
U—Dec. 7, 1892. 
