CONTAINED IN PLANTS FOR ANIMALS AND MEN. 483 
The circumstance, that Japan has, as a rule, much rain in 
summer, may account for the fact that the cholera-epidemics, so 
frequent in Japan, rarely assume such frightful proportions as 
are observed in certain cities in Europe, as Munich, Hamburg, 
Marseilles, Naples or Palermo. 
One of the violent epidemics in Japan j was that of 1886 in 
Osaka and just in that summer the rains in June, July, and 
August were very far below the average, while they were 
much less so in the case during the three other milder epidemics 
of 1885, 1890 and 1895. The same rule holds good further for 
the epidemics in Tokyo, while in Nagasaki and Hiroshima the 
four epidemics reached but small dimensions, and here the 
meteorological tables again show that the average amount of 
rain in June, July, and August never sank so far below the 
average as was the case in the year 1886 in Osaka. We may 
therefore conclude that Pettenkofer s conclusions are confirmed 
by the observations in Japan. (1) 
(i) As in spring and summer of 1896 numerous and heavy rains fell in Tokyo, 
I predicted that a cholera-epidemic would not take place in the following autumn. 
And indeed during the months of August and September the number of cholera cases 
for every week were restricted to an average of three or four, gradually disappearing 
gntirely in October. O. Loew. 
