SIMILAR TO ASIATIC CHOLERA. 
607 
enough to foul a place for want of food and water ; even the 
city of Bicanere, and the few villages on its borders; have 
scanty population, drink rain water preserved in reservoirs 
or drawn from very deep wells (100 feet), and malaria is not 
present, and cholera has not prevailed at these places, although 
there is constant intercourse with other places where cholera 
has happened with severity. 
The occurrence of Asiatic cholera in Europe is, no doubt, 
therefore, to be accounted for by the increase of population, 
and the over-crowding of commercial cities: the habits and 
manners of living of the poorer classes in filthy, undrained 
places, perhaps, increasing susceptibility or idiosyncrasy 
more of late years than at former periods, when all this was 
different.* Veterinarians have observed this in animals. We 
have, in our own time, seen many changes in the breeds of 
animals, and with these come predispositions to new forms 
of diseases, and fresh exciting causes from differences in the 
modes of feeding and management from that formerly in use, 
produced by changes in the commercial habits of the owners ; 
and to all these influences the owners themselves have been 
in like manner subjected. The reader may smile at this, but 
it is, nevertheless, true. 
We have seen, too, that diseases not formerly considered 
transferable from man to animals; and vice versa , have latterly 
been so ; but, giving the ejections and dejections of cholera 
patients, is no 'proof of any specific agency, any more than 
Dr. Tytler’s Ouse rice , which produced a disease similar to 
cholera, simply because it was not proper food. Therefore I 
doubt whether any specific agency, as contagion, is necessary 
for the production of Asiatic cholera. 
In the first Burmah campaign, the horses of the Body 
Guard were obliged to be fed with [JDhan) rice in the husk, 
which improper food brought on disease, and many died. 
The Royal Agricultural Society require those who compete 
for prizes to state the kinds of food upon which animals have 
been fed. Every feeder of animals practically knows that it 
is not altogether what animals are fed upon, but the manner 
in which this food is given. The most nutritious food is 
most likely to bring on diarrhoea : the animals pitch , as it is 
called, that is, fall off in flesh rapidly, instead of putting it 
up, unless change of food be adopted. At the same time, 
these animals are kept in well-ventilated , clean stalls. The 
same with race-horses and hunters. But man is trained up 
in the arts of civilisation, and lives in dirty , unventilated , over- 
crowded, filthy places. 
* IIow strangely true this appears at the present day ! — Ed. Vet. 
