The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-30 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

TIMES.—The accounts received of the course of
the cholera confirm almost entirely the opinions we
recently expressed upon the character of the present
visitation. It is, as we defined it, an outbreak of
the epidemic in the basin of the Mediterranean. As
yet it appears as if the air of this inland sea was ne-
cessary to the atmospheric poison. Within these
limits, too, the disease has been rather retiring to-
wards the East than advancing towards the West.
Some time ago it swept northwards from Alexandria
to Constantinople, and westwards even to Valencia
and Gibraltar. But the epidemic wave is now re-
ceding. The pestilence has appeared on the Syrian
coast at Beyrout and Jaffa, both passed over in the
previous ascent of the disease from the Nile to the
Bosphorus, and has broken out also in the Isle of
Candia. It has, too, as we anticipated it might,
crept into the Black Sea, and is spreading round its
coasts as round the shores of the Mediterranean. It
is reported from Varna, Kustenje, and Trebizonde,
and we hear of it as far as Bagdad. As far as any
track can be laid down from these movements, the
epidemic seems retiring towards the regions from
which it is said to havearrived—the coasts of Arabia.
At the same time, however, its characteristic ca-
prices have been signally shown in the exemptions
enjoyed. Sicily, though in the focus of contagion,
and visited with dreadful severity in- 1854, has
hitherto escaped. Even the ports of Barbary, ex-
posed as they may be thought to such afflictions, are
as yet healthy. Naples has not suffered, nor the
towns of Greece, though the disease is reported from
Salonica, at the head of the Archipelago. Again,
the virulence of the attacks at some points is singu-
larly contrasted with the lightness of the affliction at
others. We will say nothing about the terrible
sufferings of Constantinople, which may be explained,
perhaps, by the condition of the city and its popu-
lation ; but there is probably no great difference in
that respect between Ancona and Valencia, and
yet the former town was devastated, while the
latter escaped with little hurt. In point of fact,
the epidemic has hitherto failed to establish itself
at any point west of Ancona. It took no hold of
Marseilles, and scarcely made itself felt at Barce-
leno. Still, too, it fails to penetrate inwards from
any seaport attacked. The interior of Italy is still
free. The report of cholera at Milan was never
confirmed, and has been formally contradicted.
There are rumours of two cases at Modena, but we
cannot say on what authority. On a broad view
of the whole intelligence it remains beyond a doubt
that the ravages of the present epidemic are limited
to the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Sea.
Of the origin of the visitation we know nothing
certain, but we are furnished with many probabili-
ties. Some of these were remarkably expressed in
a Report compiled for the Egyptian Government.
The havoc committed by the epidemic at Alexandria
suggested official inquiries, and the President of the
Board of Health has addressed a communication on
the subject to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which
deserves consideration. In this memoir it is stated
as the opinion not only of the President himself,
but of all the scientific and professional authorities
in Egypt, that the poison is generated in the crowds
of pilgrims periodically visiting the holy places of
Arabia. Even the first origin of the disease in
1817 is ascribed to the same source ; and, whatever
may be our view of the theory, it is impossible,
after perusing a narrative of the facts, to deny the
probability of the inference. The pilgrims congre-:
gate at certain periods of the year from all points of
the Mahomedan world to the number of 700,000 or
800,000. They are not of a class naturally either
careful or cleanly, and on these occasions they are
worse than usual. It is even a point of religion
with them that no pilgrim should change his clothes
during the whole time of his pilgrimage. Under
these conditions they are huddled together in
enormous crowds beneath the fiery sky of the
Desert. It is an indispensable incident of the
ritual that each pilgrim should sacrifice at
least one sheep, and the skins and offal of these
countless victims are left to decompose under an
Arabian sun. The result of all this is that thou-
sands of pilgrims perish on the spot, leaving their
bodies to be shuffled hastily under a coating of sand,
which the first sirocco will disperse, and their clothes
to be packed up and carried off as sacred relics to
be distributed among their relatives and country-
men. The Egyptian Minister thinks that here is
the seedplot and hotbed of cholera, and there is cer-
tainly nothing improbable in the conclusion. He
wishes, too, that the European Powers would take
into their serious consideration a practice which it
is obviously beyond the power of a Mahomedan
Government to control. For immediate purposes,
however, it is of little use to argue about the source
of the present visitation. The direction of its pro-
gress is of more consequence than the point of its
departure. We think there is much ground for
assurance in the accounts which we have detailed,
but none for over-confidence or incredulity. The
cholera does certainly not appear to be advancing
across Europe in a definite track towards these shores
after the precedents of former times. It is hovering
over the Mediterranean and Black Seas, with a tend-
ency towards the East in its flight. It has not settled
anywhere in Europe, except at Constantinople and
Ancona. Of the " chlorine" at Hanover we hear
no more, and the Continent, so far as we know, is free
from the epidemic in its whole breadth between sea
and sea. Still, the pestilence is abroad, and though
capricious in its course it is not losing its virulence.
The mortality at Constantinople and in the vil-
lages on the Bosphorus appears even to have ex-
ceeded that at Alexandria and Damietta. We can-
not tell what course a pestilence so capricious,
when once in the air, may eventually take • and
prudence counsels caution while there is yeetime.
It happens, too, that all the measures which should
be adopted as preservatives against cholera are
simply measuits which, in our ordinary and every-
day interests, should uniformly be taken. We are
only told to be clean, and in the event of the actual
arrival of the plague to exercise a little more pru-
dence and forbearance in personal and domestic
management than in ordinary seasons. That is no
very onerous imposition. The letters, however,
which have recently appeared in our columns dis-
close the true difficulty of the problem. There is a
numerous class among us which, unfortunately,
cannot be clean •, which is so housed, lodged, occu-
pied, and fed, that it is a mere mockery to preach
cleanliness or care to it. We have to apply ourselves
to material conditions, and deal with material ob-
stacles first. We must disinfect foul air and supply
pure water. We must send whitewashers and
scavengers on their rounds, and then provide for the
distribution of the healthy and the removal of the
sick. All large towns, and, for that matter, many
country villages, contain habitations from which
sickness in some form or other is rarely absent, and
in which an epidemic, when it arrives, is sure to be
found. We are happy to think that these nests of
disease are less common than formerly, but they are
far too numerous still. It is with these that we
have to deal, and to this task, in one field or other,
our duty is pretty well limited. For once there is
an accord among scientific authorities. Whatever
may be thought of the origin or nature of Cholera,
we are all of one mind as to the way to meet it.
Theories of quarantine or contagion find but little
favour. The true course is to set our houses in order
and provide wholesome food and proper medicines
for those exposed or afflicted. Deprive the pestilence
of its natural allies in filth and fear, reduce it to its
own unaided action, and counteract that action by
timelyremedies—those are the simple precepts which
science gives. It will be our own fault if they are
not followed.

POST.—Not to sound an alarm, as is too usual
at the time being ; not to represent malarious in-
fluences as preternaturally rife beyond what occurs
normally at this season ; the most stolid observer
of passing signs must fain acknowledge that three
millions of human beings cannot be packed together
in one great city without incurring extraordinary
chances of disease from malaria. Time out of mind
the plum season has been recognised as the most
unhealthy in the round of twelve months. Winter
may oppress with cold and damp ; people of weak
lungs may then succumb who would have lingered
awhile in comparative health under more genial
conditions of temperature and climate. The ver-
dure of spring is not without its constitutional
trials ; and summer, with sunstrokes and fevers of
inflammatory type, reminds frail mortality that
even when nature is at her strongest the destroyer
death will garner in his own. Of all seasons,
nevertheless, autumn is most unhealthy to densely-
packed human populations. Disease and death are
then most rife ; pestilences, which at other times
creep languidly westward from the East, culminate
amongst us in their gravity, and strike with a fata-
lity to which we are at other times unused. As a
counterbalancing set-off to this condition of things,
as a matter that, when considered and reflected
upon, should reconcile us to city domicile in autumn,
is the well-known and acknowledged fact that pre-
valent diseases of this period are more preventible
than those of any other. Much as doctors may

wrangle and dispute among themselves concerning
the pathology of many diseases, they are completely
in accord in respect to the typhoid and choleraic
complaints which are apt to prevail at this season.
Guardians of the public health acknowledge, as a
matter too obvious for dispute, that, given pure air
and pure ingesta, these classes of maladies can be,
not wholly warded off indeed, but prevented, assum-
ing the proportion of epidemic scourges. Thus,
prevention seems to resolve itself into conditions of
breathing, eating, drinking, and avoiding. Of
these, the breathing function is the one that con-
cerns the hygienic physician most. People are apt
to pay little regard to influences that they cannot
see—influences which in many cases are not appre-
ciable to any of the senses. For this reason, the
supplying of pure air becomes a matter of more
imminent public importance than the supplying of
pure victuals. Of late the public has come to have
some due regard for invisible pests wafted atmo-
spherically, in proof of which we need only cite the
abolition of cesspools and the prosecution of the
main drainage scheme. One by one noxious
manufactures have had an onslaught made upon
them. War has been waged against intra-urban
knackers' yards and manure factories ; bone-boiling
establishments have been forced, in many cases, to
migrate ; smoke has been diminished to the point of
admitting the blooming of roses in the Temple-
gardens--not, however, that smoke is chargeable
with any great meed of hygienic wrong. Grave-
yard pumps have been locked up, and city grave-
yards themselves are lying undisturbed by sexton's
spade and mattock. Altogether, we are improving
in the matter of atmospheric hygiene ; but there yet
remain pest-generating inconsistencies strangely at
variance with the general recognition of the value
of pure air; and, not least among these, one which
came under the notice of Mr. Humphreys, the coro-
ner, at Bethnal-green on Monday, and a report of
which we published yesterday. The object of that
inquest was to ascertainthe cause of death of a child
named Cannel, who is said to have sickened from
the breathing of foul air emanating from receptacles
of putrid blood, employed by sugar refiners. Inso-
much as the inquest stands adjourned, we have no
right to anticipate or prejudice the verdict. It
would be altogether an abuse of evidence to state
that the child's death was from the cause alleged ;
but knowing something about these receptacles for
putrid blood—technically called by the sugar re-
finers " spice"—we consider we are only indicating
an obvious fact, and acquitting ourselves of an act
of common justice to the community, by protesting
against their existence in a densely-crowded neigh-
bourhood at this malarious season. In a graveyard
the festering remains are at least buried—covered
with earth—and the purifying influence of earth is
all but magical ; but in the establishments where
blood is collected in tanks to await the sugar re-
finer's convenience the process of corruption takes
place unchecked. There blood—the most readily
putrescent part of animals—is subjected to condi-
tions favouring its putrescence in the highest degree.
The air is laden with noxious particles which go wafted
on the breeze God knows whither, after wreaking the
full measure of their evil on the ill-fed squalor hard
by. Again, we say, this protest against the " spice"
tanks down east, in Bethnal-green and other neigh-
bourhoods adjoining the great sugar refineries, has
only a collateral reference to the death of young
Cannel. That event, however, naturally prompts
to the advice which we now tender—namely, that
the local officers of health see to the abomination
without delay. It would be consistent with the dic-
tates of sound hygienic principles if " spice" collec-
tors were obliged to change their premises to some
suburban site, not temporarily, but wholly ; for
although the maximum evil of their calling developes
itself just now, yet at no season can the presence of
large masses of blood in any densely populated
neighbourhood be other than prejudicial. It is not
without some effort that the mind of an individual,
unacquainted with the practice of sugar refining,
can realise to itself the presence of such an abomin-
ation as putrid blood in a manufactory having to
deal with such a seemingly refined article of food as
sugar. The fact is, however, that many refineries
(not all) are, on account of the presence and the use
of this agent, more disgusting to the sense of smell
than any slaughter-house. Professedly, all sugar
refined for exportation to Mohammedan nations is
manufactured without blood ; and this being so, we
may be pardoned for expressing a wish that sugar
refiners would treat their Christian purchasers more
like Christians. Be this as it may, reservoirs of
putrid blood should no longer be allowed to exist
festering in Bethnal-green or any similar thickly
,populated locality at this season.