Chapter IV.]
CONCLUSIONS SUGGESTED BY THE STUDY OF THE CHOLERA OF 1875-76.
313
smaller towns and villages. It is to be feared that before this reaches you it will have
escaped the boundaries of this province, and then no one can predict its future course."
The Lancet of 14th August also states that, by accounts just received, cholera is fearfully
prevalent in Damascus, as many as 400 cases a day being reported. On 8th December the
possible origin of this cholera was discussed by the Epidemiological Society of London, but with
no result.
CONCLUSION.
This is the story which the cholera of 1875 tells for itself. It is written by the finger of
nature, and her finger is not guided nor controlled by the opinion of any individual. Nature
writes for every observer, and he who chooses to study what is thus written will not finally err.
The Statistical Officer is responsible to every local observer who contributes to his totals
and his generalisations.
I accept the responsibility for errors, and I make no profession that my generalisations are
beyond dispute. I thoroughly recognise that they are subject to modification with further expe
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rience. Any one who knows my work personally is aware that I am so far above prejudice in
this matter, and that I should not hesitate to demolish the structure which I have built,
and reconstruct anew upon a healthier theory, the vast accumulation of truths which now
stand recorded, and which I have tried to make common property. To any one who for a love
of the truth suggests the possible error arising from defective registration, I answer, that our
well-observed types and our imperfect general registration are sufficient to show and prove
satisfactorily what will be more perfectly exhibited as the defects in registration are amended.
The aggregate of the facts of 1875-76, here given, is the aggregate as far as I know it. To
me, claiming to be a competent observer, it appeals as a harmony; and it is, I believe, competent
to any one with these facts before him to come to the same conclusion. What he will accept
or what lie will refuse, each individual must, however, choose for himself, and be guided by
his own capacity ; and for myself, I assert no infallibility as far as the interpretation of facts
goes. I must repeat once more, that to discriminate what are the primary truths regarding
epidemic cholera and what are secondary, is essential to the study of the natural history of
chol era. A wri t er professi ng t o i gnore t hi s di st i nct i on, and t o cri t i ci se my wri t i ngs wi t hout
a distinct recognition of this truth, might as well leave his task alone. All must end in a mere
see-saw of asseveration and denial, and will profit nothing towards a consistent narrative or a
finished study. What such critics reckon to be the whole truth, I take to be much less than
the half, as applied to Indian cholera ; for I can, if necessary, consistently incorporate in my
system all that is insisted on, and still leave intact the whole series of propositions which go
to demonstrate the primary truths : the reverse has no such resource. Once acknowledge as
true that cholera has no existence except in relation to man, and the natural history of cholera
in India is an untruth; and this no one now-a-days will assert who is acquainted with the
facts. Into this study nature will intrude, however roughly she may be pitchforked aside. I
have written to little purpose, if it be deemed a sufficient answer to the great generalisations
set forth in this paper, that a gang of prisoners of the Central Jail at Poona were poisoned by
drinking impure water. However true and important in its practical bearing may be the state
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ment that cholera may be propagated and diffused in water, the alleged fact is secondary, and it
does not fall into the natural class of primary truths. It has been necessary for me all through
these reports to illustrate the truth that cholera in India is a moisture-loving miasm ; and
my prejudices are naturally in favour of the doctrine which holds that cholera may be propa
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gated in water and subsequently diffused throughout a community in the same vehicle. But
the deduction speciously drawn from the illustration, that wherever exhaustive enquiry has
been made in India the results have been the same as obtained in England, is untenable ; for,
admitting the illustration in question to be proved, the far broader truth comes in to outweigh
the significance of the deduction, the truth that no aggregate of outbreaks is the equivalent of
an epidemic of cholera in India.
Over and over again we have heard, that, were the history of the epidemic of 1818 to be
written in the light thrown upon cholera by research in Europe and America as well as India,
the account would be very different from that given by Scot or Jameson.
The facts of 1875 we know to be facts. Not less true were Scot's delineations of 1818.
The facts are visibly and conspicuously true to any naturalist, looking at their mere aspect ;
and I did not hesitate in Scot's defence to repudiate the suggestion that Scot's dates did not
represent the whole truth.
The exact facts of 1818 repeated themselves in 1875, and the coincidence was allowed
to pass without notice.
A reviewer has remarked, and with reason, that a woven web, such as that which I have
constructed in my various reports on cholera, implies the expression of the grandest scientific
truths, or else a wonderful skill in pleading for what is false. I accept the alternative. I
can make no statement which implies a higher scientific standard than that which I have
made many times before, and offered for acceptance. It is this, that every epidemic manifest
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ation, every outbreak, and every case of cholera to be met with in India, shall take its place
in a system—a place which can be recognised as proper to it; that what has been appreciably
true regarding cholera in the past shall be appreciably true in all time to come ; and that
parallels, which fall through no mere coincidence, but in subordination to agencies which are
natural and therefore appreciable, shall fall in the future as they have fallen in the past. In a
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