THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF THE CHOLERA BACILLUS. 247 
leaving the projecting hard rock at the top, is really the 
essential condition requisite for the formation of all cataracts; 
and when the face of the precipice is uniform in hardness 
from top to bottom the inevitable result of wear is a gradual 
uniform slope forming a rapid and not a cataract. The 
hard rock stratum of Niagara Falls crops out upon the face 
of the Queenston Cliff, where it is twenty dive feet in thick¬ 
ness and 250 feet in height from the water; and it follows 
that in the origin of these Falls they were nearly 100 feet 
greater in total height than at the present time, and had 
the same cataract form in the upper portion, but probably 
the form of a rapid in the lower portion on account of the 
soft stratum not extending completely to the bottom ; also 
that in the future of these Falls the present cataract character 
will ultimately become lost, and the whole be reduced to a 
rapid. 
THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF THE CHOLERA 
BACILLUS * 
BY FRANCIS FOWKE, F.R.M.S. 
During the outbreak of cholera, in 1849, a sub-committee 
of the Bristol Medico-Cliirurgical Society was appointed to 
investigate the nature of cholera by means of microscopical 
observations. Two of the sub-committee, Drs. Brittan and 
Swayne, each separately examined the rice water evacuations, 
which had been obtained from two patients in the cholera 
hospital, with microscopical objectives of 1 / 8 th and 1 / n th , by 
Powell and Lealand, and Ross, respectively, and they describe 
as follows, the cells, annular bodies, or corpuscles, which they 
observed:—“They vary very much in size and apparent 
structure during the different stages of their development. 
The smallest are of the same size as, or even much less than, 
blood-globules, so that to show them properly an object-glass 
of high magnifying power, such as one-eightli, one-twelftli, or 
one-sixteenth of an inch is required ; their walls refract light 
powerfully; fragments of them present the appearance of 
small segments of circles .” The italics are mine. Dr. Budd 
found identical bodies in drinking water, obtained from cholera 
districts, and Dr. Brittan also from the air of infected places. 
* Abstract of paper read before the Birmingham Natural History 
and Microscopical Society, May 19th, 1885, 
