The Sun.
London, England, 1853-12-06 00:00:00

THE SUN,_ LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 6, 1853.

doubted and denied ; but the last few weeks have shown I
with sad incontrovertible certainty that, after only four 1
years' absence, cholera has maters obtained a footing on our
soil. 600 or 700 deaths, red in the metropolis since
the beginning of September, have already attested its
presence.
" Anxiously adverting to the future, and ask;ng what
may be the onward progress of the disease, we can appeal
only to a narrow experience. Before us lie the records of
only two complete visitations of the disease, and the com-
mencement of this the third. It would be a shallow phi-
losophy that should pretend, from two observations, to
predict the possible orbit of this obscurely wandering
plague.
" Yet I dare not disguise from you that such knowledge
3,s we have, to justify scientific anticipation, is pregnant
with threats and gloom. For, let me remind you of the
past. At each former period of attack, the infection, after
a certain course over continental Europe, struck upon our
eastern coast in the summer of an unforgotten year. In
the northern parts of Great Britain, so soon as it had lit
among the population, each time it burst forth into explo-
sive activity, and worked its full measure of destruction
without delay. More faintly it reached the south. On each
occasion, indeed, at the close of summer, London was sen-
sibly affected by the disease ; but, we hoped, under a
milder infliction. Here and there, within its bills of mor-
tality (as at Tooting, in 1848) there was thrown some
astounding flash on a particular hotbed of co-operating
poison ; but on the whole, it seemed to the sanguine on
each occasion, that the fury of the epidemic was expending
itself in our northern towns, and that the metropolis was
to be comparatively spared.
" Each time, at the commencement of the new year, our
London mortality from cholera seemed stationary within
the limit of a few hundred deaths. Each time winter and
spring a:lowed a long truce to our invaded city, and con-
firmed the omens of the hopeful.
" But each time there was disappointment. Each time,
as the warmth of summer re-quickened the exterior con-
ditions of chemical activity, the dormant fire kindled
afresh—slowly at first, but with speedy acceleration of
rate. Each time, in the few weeks before Michaelmas,
amid almost universal threatenings of the disease, and
amid such panic of death as the metropolis had not known
since the Great Plague, there suddenly fell many thousands
of the population.

Thus, then, our position stands. Scientific prediction
of phenomena can arise only in the knowledge of laws.
That the phenomena of the disease, however capricious
they may seem, are obedient to some absolute uniformity
as yet beyond our ken, are enchained by that same rigid
sequence of cause and effect which is imposed on all re-
maining nature, it would be impossible to doubt. But
these conditions are hitherto unknown to science. Hither-
to we can speak of the facts alone, with a short enalpirical
knowledge of their succession. But in this light, such as
it is, the conclusion is only too obvious. If the disease,
already notorious for tendency to return on its former
vestiges, repeat on this third occasion the steps of its two
previous courses ; or, perhaps I should rather say, if it
now proceed to complete a repetition, which it has already
half effected, Asiatic cholera will be severely epidemic in
London in the third quarter of next year, and will proceed,
with a stern unflattering test, to measure the degree in
which those promises of sanitary improvement have been
redeemed which the terror of its recent visitation eitortad
even from the supinest and most ignorant of its witnesses.
" In the face of so great a danger, you will reasonably
claim of your Officer of Health that he shall report to you
how far the city is fortified against this dreadful invasion
—how far the hygienic defences of life, if weak, may be
strengthened—how far there remain breaches now insus-
ceptible of repair.
1. It forms an all-important part of these considera-
tions for resistance to the disease to recognise quite accu-
rately what is its fashion of attack. Since I last addressed
you on the subject, in my report for 1849-50, the materials
for correct generalisation have been very largely increased
by Mr. Farr's admirable Report to the Registrar-General on
the cholera in England, and by numerous other important
publications. By collating with these works the more re-
stricted, yet not uninstructive, experience which arose
within your particular jurisdiction, I hope to have en-
larged my knowledge of the subject, and to have become
able with greater confidence to submit my conclusions for
your acceptance.
" The first and most obvious characteristic of the disease
is its preference for particular localities. It is eminently
a district disease ; and the conditions which determine
its local settlement are demonstrable physical pecu-
liarities.

"After carefully reviewing the subject, I do not know
that I need qualify, except to express more confidently the
account I formerly gave you of those peculiarities, as con-
sisting in the conjunction of dampness with organic de-
composition.
" It is in respect of these conditions—especially among
dense urban populations—that the level of occupied ground,
relatively to the nearest water surface becomes of primary
importance. The low level, in itself or rather in respect
of the watery dampness it implies, is not enough to localise
the pestilence. To be afloat at sea might be the safest
lodging.
" The sub-district of St. Peter's, Hammersmith, aver-
ages only four feet above high-water level ; that of St.
Olave's, Southwark, two feet higher; yet among the for-
mer and worst placed of these two populations, the cholera
mortality was only 18 per 10,000, while among the latter
and better placed it rose to 196, multiplying nearly 11
times the minor phenomena of a lower level; so also within
your own jurisdiction. Side by side, along the river, lie
four of your sub-districts—three at the elevation of 21 feet,
one at the elevation of 24 feet. The cholera mortality, if
simply proportioned to level, should have been nearly the
same for these four sub-districts, and somewhat less in the
last one than in the first three. But contrary was the fact
.

—for, in two of these sub-districts the cholera mortality
for equal numbers of population was 4i times as great as
in the other two.

" It appears, then, that in certain low-lying levels there
must exist some second condition to complicate the pro-
blem—some condition of extreme frequency in such dis-
tricts, though not essentially present there.
" That condition impends whenever there dwells at such
levels a certain density of population. It mainly varies
with the degree in which that dense population lives in the
atmosphere of its own excrements and refuse.
" In this respect I cannot refrain from saying that the
giant error of London in its present system of drainage.
Probably, in considerable parts of the metropolitan area,
house drainage is extensively absent ; probably, in consi-
derable parts, the sewers, from the nature of their con-
struction, are very doubtful advantages to the districts
they traverse; but the evil before all others to which I

attach importance in relation to the present subject is that
habitual empoisoninent of the soil and air which is in-
separable from our tidal drainage. From this influence,
I doubt not a large proportion of the metropolis has de-
rived its liability to cholera. A moment's reflection is
sufficient to show the immense distribution of putrefac-
tive dampness which belongs to this vicious system.
There is implied in it that the entire excrementation of
the metropolis (with the exception of such as, not less poi-
sonously, lies pent beneath houses) shall sooner or later be
mingled in the stream of the river, to be rolled backward
and forward among the population ; that at low water, fcr
many hours, this material shall be trickling over broad
belts of spongy bank, which then dry their contaminated
mud in the sunshine, exhaling fceter and poison ; that at
high water, for many hours, it shall be retained* or driven
back within all low-level sewers and house-drains, soaking
far and wide into the soil, or forming putrid sediments
along miles of underground brickwork, as on a deeper
pavement. Sewers, which under better circumstances
should be benefactions and appliances for health in: their
several districts, are thus rendered inevitable sources of
evil. During aAarge proportion of their time they are oc-
cupied in retaining or re-distributing that which it is their
office to remove. They furnish chambers for an immense
faxal evaporation ; at every breeze which strikes against
their open mouths, at every tide which encroaches on their
inward space, their gases are breathed into the upper air,
wherever outlets exist, into houses, footpaths, and carriage
way._

To you, gentlemen, as Commissioners of Sewers for
the city of London, these remarks may seem superfluous ;
the rather so, as the worst evils of tidal drainage are not
largely exemplified within your jurisdiction. But it seems
to me of extreme moment at the present time, when very
costly improvements of the metropolitan drainage are
about to undergo Parliamentary discussion, that the public
should be well aware how indispensable such improve-
ments are for the general health of London, and how im-
portant in fact they are to thousands who at first sight
might think themselves little interested in their comple-
tion.

" To some individual householder, dwelling at a high
level, all concern in the subject may seem to terminate
with the defluxion of his own sewage. So that his own
pipes remain clear, little cares he for the ultimate outfall
of his nuisance. Perhaps, if he knew better, he would
care more. His gift returns to him with increase. Down
in the valley whither his refuse runs, converge innumera-
able kindred contributions. From city and suburb, from
an area of 100 square miles, covered by 250,000 houses,
their. unprecedented throng of metropolitan life,
creme pournt, e uto
u rthating single
garbage, channeland refuse,ever y conceivableand
beast, street and slum, shamble and factory market and
From the polluted bosom of the river steam up
incessantly,hpositaL m
though unseen, the vapours of a' retributive
poison ; densbeastukasn
land sometimes
d
w
adndmossttiukd?structive, no doubt, along
,sest;tmeh restioluf e lowests
rolled
by wind,
n sometimes blended low tbuthe so
spreadingclden
over miles of l
mist, and threat-
ening even that curls oyer distant
fields ; for, not alone in Rotherhithe or Newington—not
alone along the Effra or the Fleet —are traced the evils of
this greaerniasm. The deepest shadows of the cloud
lie here, but its outskirts darken the distance. A fever
hardly to be accounted for, an infantile sickness of undue
malignity, a doctor's injunction for change of air, may
at times suggest to the dweller in our healthiest su-
burbs that, while draining his refuse to the Thames, he
receives for roquittal some partial workings of the gigantic
poison which he has contributed to maintain.
" The subject of these remoter effects I refrain from pur-
suing, as foreign to my present purpose. That onwhich I
wish to insist is the character of the river in its relation to
the marginal sub-districts, which it habitually dampens
and occasionally floods with putrescent soakage, and in its
relations to the sewers of low gradient, which it converts
(often with their adjoining soil) into the similitude and
hurtfulness of cesspools. I wish emphatically to point out
that the several parts of London have suffered, and are
likely again to suffer from cholera in proportion as either
this naalarious influence is exerted on them, or other kin-
dred miasms are furnished by their soil ; and it is my be-
lief, from such evidence as is before me, that the general
liability of London to suffer the epidemic visitation will
cease whenever an efficient and inoderous system of drain-
age, conveying all refuse of the metropolis beyond range of
its atmosphere, shall be substituted for our present
elaborate disguise of an 'unremovcd. nuisance. I deem it
right to state this explicitly, not only bec use it is my
duty to give you in simple truth the conclusions to which

I ani led by careful reflection on the facts, but likewise
because, for the credit of sanitary medicine, and for your
justification in the awful presence of a recurring pestilence
within your jurisdiction, it ought to be thoroughly known
how much of the cause is common to the entire metropo-
lis, and has not admitted of removal by measures of par-
tial improvement. And the circumstances will, perhaps,
excuse me if I repeat to your hon. Court, represented as
you are, both in the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers
and in Parliament, where this question must shortly be
discussed, that the universal ieform of our metropolitan
drainage, at whatever imaginary pecuniary cost, is an
urgent claim and necessity, unless this great city is again,
disease -within
as two centuries ago, to live under the constant alarm of
increasing epidemic destruction.
among your four ferritebyaonlf-side
excess
Revert'
mg, however
the to the more especial relations of
suryb..,dyisoturiwotisl,l
tworem esmubfreerretdhaitn,
marked
, bank-side
cholera mortality having been 4i
structive, because thos
times as great as oft the other two, The fact is in-
notwo suffering sub-districts (though
of lower level than the other, were marginal to the

if I am informed that in large distiireoloz•etldiefosroutwtho
the river, this retention of sewage is p
of every' tide-13 hours out of every 21. -still id er
do II