202 



CHOLERA 



Superintendent of Emigration, which shows the 

 number of cases among the inoculated and the non- 

 inoculated at Goalundo. From this table, it is 

 seen that out of 1527 non-inoculated coolies, who 

 passed through Goalundo, 33, or 2.09 per cent., 

 got cholera ; whereas of 873 inoculated coolies, 

 only 2, or 0.2 per cent., were attacked by the 

 disease ; that is, the unprotected suffered about 

 ten times as much as the inoculated. Assistant- 

 Surgeon Mukerjee also reports that during his 

 cold-weather tour he passed through some villages 

 in the Manbhum district, in which he had practised 

 inoculation the previous year : and, though there 

 had been epidemics of cholera in them, the inocu- 

 lated persons escaped. They came to him in 

 numbers, stating that they owed their safety to the 

 inoculation." 



Of course, the preventive treatment touches 

 points only here and there on the map of India, with 

 its 300,000,000 people. Probably it will never 

 become so general in India as vaccination. Cholera 

 in India recalls what Ambroise Pare, more than 400 

 years ago, wrote of the plague, " Here in Paris it is 

 always with us." But, wherever preventive inocula- 

 tion has been done, there it has done good. 



Another most important result of the discovery 

 of the cholera bacillus is its use in diagnosis. For 

 example, if a case of suspected cholera is landed at 

 a British port, the sanitary authority at once takes 

 steps to ascertain whether the specific microbe is 

 present ; and, according to the answer given by 

 bacteriology, either allows the patient to proceed on 

 his journey, or adopts measures of isolation to pre- 



