406 COMMUNICABILITY OF ASIATIC CHOLEHA TO ANIMALS. 
ciently numerous to be at least impressive.* Of particular 
instances of a striking kind, we shall mention two. Fourteen 
days after the death of a person from cholera, at Leeds, a 
box, containing this person’s clothes, was opened by a man, 
one evening, at Monkton, twenty miles off. The next day 
the man was seized with cholera, of which he died on the 
fourth day. A husband, ten months after his wife’s death 
from cholera, at York, opens a drawer for the first time, 
which contained her trinkets and clothes. He wept over the 
cap in which she died ; took cholera that evening, and died 
next day.j* 
To test this most important point we had projected some 
experiments on animals with linen supposed to be infected, 
or purposely charged with cholera fluids. We had also 
intended to try the condensed perspiration and breath ; but 
whilst gradually advancing in our inquiry, the epidemic of 
1849 happily ceased in London. 
Having expressed our opinion freely on each set of facts, 
as they have now been brought before the reader, and having 
stated enough, we hope, to vindicate the importance of the 
inquiry, we refrain from the recapitulation of formal conclu- 
sions. We desire only to reiterate our belief, that, though 
short of actual proof, the evidence, both general and par- 
ticular, accidental and experimental, is not unfavorable to 
the notion of a certain susceptibility of the dog, and perhaps, 
too, of the cat, to the influence of the cholera-agent, whatever 
that may be. In future experiments, therefore, the former 
animal should probably be preferred. Sufficient trials, we 
think, have been made of small quantities of cholera-fluids, 
and also of dead cholera-blood ; but large quantities of the 
blood, and of the various secretions and excretions, taken at 
very early periods of the disease, have yet to be fairly tried. 
So also should linen, saturated with the discharges and exha- 
lations, and shut tip so as to be allowed to dry spontaneously. 
Careful observations, moreover, should be made on the diseases 
of animals during the cholera visitations ; and the whole in- 
quiry must als5 be repeated by careful collateral investiga- 
tions in ague, yellow fever, plague, typhus, marsh, and other 
fevers, and the exanthemata. J May we hope, when this is ac- 
complished, patiently, honestly, and skilfully, the microscope 
* Consult Van Swieten, Cullen, Meade, Pringle, and Lind. 
f Simpson on Cholera, pp. 137-9. 
+ Parturient women, suffering from decided cholera, either fatal or not, have 
given birth to infants, which have been seized with that disease, immediately 
or after a few hours , and have rapidly died. (Lancet, 1834-5, vol. ii; 1849, ii, 
pp. 131 and 240.) 
