The Sun.
London, England, 1831-06-15 00:00:00

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No. 12 093.

CHOLERA MORBUS.

(From the Times.)
We solicit the attention of Ministers to the sub-
joined letter from a physician of eminence,—a fo-
reigner, who is not ignorant of the nature of cholera
morhus, nor, as is proved by the communication
with which he has favoured us, indifferent to the
danger of its near approach. We further beg than
the respectable heads of the College of Physicians
will consider the expediency of employing on the
' committee about to frame a report on the above sub-
ject for the guidance of his Majesty's Government
at this important crisis, medical men experienced
in the treatment of cholera, whether under its
Asiatic or European form, many of whom may he
found among the able servants of the East India
Company, and among recent visitors to the coun-
tries bordering on the Baltic. Though we are not
by temper much given to alarm, we admit that the
present is not an occasion to be trilled with.
The follotling is the letter to which we refer:—
" TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
" beg to enclose some remarks on cholera, in
case you should find them worthy of insertion.

" The extreme indifference with which Government
looks upon the threatening invasion of the cholera Incubus,_
cannot be aecounted_forbut by the circumstance that ,the
disease while -in Indigsvitia only epidemic, and accordingly
out of the reach of such prophylactic measures as quaran-'
tine, &c. It therefore is of the greatest importance that
those who have studied the disease in its further progress
should insist upon tbefact that, besides some other re-
markable modifications which cholera has undergone -since
its appearance in Europe, it has also become decidedly
contagious. On this point the Russian and German ob-
servers are nearly as unanimous as Engliih practitioners in
India were with respect to the contrary opinion. A great
number of instances might be adduced, which would place
the contagious nature of cholera in Europe beyond any
doubt. But as this is a question which ought not to be
settled by many, but by a few decisive and well-observed
facts, I select the following, which appear to me to be so
striking, as probably to convert even the most determined
non-contagionist. Before the disease had broken out at
Orenburg, a quarantine of fourteen days bad been esta-
blished for all persons who came from infected or suspected
places ; eight individuals, after having performed the qua-
rantine, left the town, and went to eight different places
in the neighbourhood, where they had scarcely arrived
when they were seized with the disease, which, in conse-
quence, began rapidly to spread amongst the inhabitants.
A physician in Casan has been enabled to trace the line of
infection, so that in many instances he could distinctly
point out the communication between infected and non-in-
fected places, by healthy persons, whose clothes, &c , must
consequently, be suppo.ed to have ben the vehicle of the
contagious matter. Another important feature of the dis-
ease is its slow development. In Orenlyrrg it did not
break out before the 35th day after the arrival of the cara-
van by which it was imported into that place. The latter
observation shows the insufficiency of a quarantine of one
or two weeks, and the former render the contagious na-
ture of the disease so extremely probable, if not certain,
that Government will be liable to censure if it does not,
on the strength of such probability, resort to much more
energetic preventive measures than have hitherto bein
adopted. " I atn, Sir, your obedient servant,
" June 10. " "
M. K.