The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-28 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 28 1849.

—"And you have done it, too."—Laughter and
cheers ) Yes; and he would do it, whenever he
could have a g.:od, u;) fight; fltee to face,
with the advocates of for,,igneri:i—(Chcers)—but he
did not thick it would be right or wise to say more
upon that subject on the present occasion. He would
only say that the High Sherifl'had conducted himself
with so much urbanity and kindness during the
election, that he was entitled to their most cordial
acknowledgments; and he b:'gged to move a vote
of thanks to that official.
The motion having been seconded by E VELYN, was
carried by acclamation, amid loud cheering.
Mr. It. GonnaAwri wished to Observe that the
electors of the borough of Guildford had it in thrir
poxer to promote the interests of the agriculturists
by returning Members for the borough NA ho would
support those interests. If the electors of Guildford
did not send Members to Parliament who would sup-
port the agriculturists, they could not expect the
agriculturists to support them. The agriculturists
were independent of them, but the pople of Guild-
ford were not independent of the agriculturists. If
the farmer's waggon did not come into the town, the
townspeople would soon find out that free-trade was
even worse than they now supposed it to be. Ile
knew that the borough had returned one free-trade
Member ; but he presumed that the other (Mr. Currie),
from the support he had given to Mr. Evelyn, was a
staunch Protectionist.—(Cheers.) He called upon the
meeting to give three cheers for Colonel 11. Sumner
and Mr. Thurlow, who had actively promoted Mr.
Evelyn's election.

—•
The cheers having been given, a portly gentleman
in the bo ly of the hall, whose indignation seemed to
have been excited by the remarks of the last speaker,
endeavoured to make some observations, but his voi:e
was drowned by the shouts of those by whom he was
surrounded, and, finding it impossible to obtain a
hearing, lie at length relapsed into silence.
Colonel SUMNER and Mr. Tnunnow having
acknowledged the compliment which had been paid
them,
Mr. CURRIE, M.P., said he believed there was no
man in the hall who was a better Conservative than
himself, or who from birth, habit, feeling, and con-
viction was more attached to the interest of the
farmers.—(Cheers.)
The assembly then separated, and Mr. Evelyn
again proceeded round the town in procession with
his supporters.

POISONING AT CHELTENHAM.

CHELTENHAM, THURSDAY.—The protracted, in-
quiry into the cause of the cleaah of Samuel and
Elizabeth Gregory has been closed this evening, and
a verdict of " Wilful Murder" has been returned
against Emanuel Barnett, the person who furnished
the materials for making the poisoned dumplings,
though the mystery of the case has by no means been
cleared up.
The jury re• assembled yesterday evening after our
parcel was dispatched, and proceeded with the exami-
nation of other witnesses. The last witness examined,
it will be remembered, was a ycung girl named
Stuart, who denied that she had teen present at the
funeral of the deceased on Thursday last, or that she
had made use of certain expressions imputed to her
by a Mrs. Stephenton as to her adMitted knowledge
of the parties who had procured and administered the
arsenic. _

The next witness called was the mother of the
witness Stuart, an elderly woman, named Martha
Sage, who deposed that she knew nothing whatever
of the cause of death of the deceased. She also swore
positively that she hzd never mentioned the subject
of arsenic to her daughter, Harriet Stuart, and that
she had never used any threat towards her in
connexion with the death of the deceased, or as to the
purchase of arsenic, as sworn by Mrs. Stt-phenton.
George Barnett, the son of the two prisoners Ema-
nuel Barnett and his wife, was also examined at great

length by the coroner and jury, but no new face; was
established by his evidence ; indeed, he appeared to
know very little of his father's movernil,nts, and less of
the transactions of the day on which the deceased
came by their death.
The COILONER, at this stage, repeated his conviction
that it was unnecessary to protract the investigation,
and addressed the jury on the nature of the evidence
before them, and its etThet as implicating the prisoner
Emanuel Barnett. He did not think that any of the
facts brought in evidence at all attached blame to
Mrs. Barnett ; or, at any rate, there was not suffi-
cient against her to justify her detention in custody.
The coroner then referred to the evidence as against

her husband, Emanuel Barnett, which he considered
was quite sufficient to prove that the poisoned flour
had come from his hands, and that that was the mov-
ing cause of the death of the unfortunate couple. The
prisoner, Emanuel 13arnett, having given no satisfac-
tory account of the manner in which he had become
possessed of the arsenic, where he had bought the
flour, how he had come by it, or whether he had
ever had arsenic in his possession, the jury would, no
doubt, return such a verdict as would place him upon
his trial. The coroner then cautioned the prisoner
that he was not bound to make any statement, and at
the same time told him that any statement which he
might make at all criminating himself would be taken
down to be made use of against him hereafter.
The prisoner, Emanuel Barnett, then said he was
quite ignorant of the manner in which the arsenic got
into the flour. He had not placed it there himself.
He had never bought or used arsenic in his life ;
indeed he did not know what arsenic was, never
having used any in his life; He added, that the last
flour which he had purchased he had got at the shop
of Mr. Hollis, in Cheltenham. _ _ _

The jury then consulted together privately for
half an hour, after which, the parties being again
called into the room, they returned their verdict—
" Wilful murder against Emanuel Barnett," who was
accordingly committed to take his trial at the next
assizes for Gloucestershire. The prisoner's wife was
set at liberty.
To day the second inquest, on the body of Samuel
Gregory was resumed, before the same coroner (Mr.
Mayer) r.nd another jury. The evidence given in
this case was very similar to that produced on the
first inquest, and it is therefore unnecessary to repeat
it. In this case also a verdict of " Wilful murder"
was returned against Emanuel Barnett.
The prisoner Barnett and his wife have also been
examined before the local bench of magistrates, but

the proceedings before them have been—merely of a
formal character, the object king to keep the pri-
soners in custody until the coroner jury had returned
their verdict.

MOURNING.—In consequence of the greatly in
creased demand for black apparel, the prices have
generally risen in a like ratio, and the additional outlay
necessary has fallen heavily upon the middle classes.
It must be borne in mind that such an effect is HO more
than what was to be expected, where the requirement
is sudden, great, and urgent, and where the small retail
dealer from a want of foresight is driven to purchase in
a dear market. There aro houses, however, whose
whole stock consisting of this description of goods, find
an ample return in the increased demand, and thus in
periods like tho present prove a positive boon to the
public. The Messrs. Jay, of Regent• street, we are told,
are eminent in this respect, and clearly serve to demon-
strate the fact, that in highly fashionable localities,
we may rely upon the advantages of quality, of style,
and of price, which their large purchases, by reason
of their great command of capital and the markets,
ensure.
DEATH OF MR. WILLIAM CLEATt--We regret
to announce the unexpected death of this highly intelli-
gent and respected gentleman, which took place almost
suddenly, or after a few licurs' illness, on Monday morn-
ing, in this city, and shortly after his return from at-
tending the meeting of the British Association in Bit.
mingbain. Mr. Clear held a prominent position among
the merchants of Cork, was connected with its various
public boards, and was a steady supporter and distin-
guished member of its literary and scientific bodies.
lle was likewise a steady supporter of the public chari-
ties of the city, and at all times freely associated with
schemes of local or general utility. Mr. Clear was a
member of the -Unitarian congregation, and was highly
respected by his fellow-citizens for his worth and inte-
grity.—Cork Examiner..
POOR-LAW RELIEF.—On Sunday next, the 30th
instant, an Aot relating to the charges for the relief of the
poor in unions will expire, and by an Act of the late ses-
sion it is continued for another year, with various amend-
ments for the relief of the poor. By the 16th section it
is provided that where any pauper shall have in his pos-
session, or belonging to him, any money or valuable
security for money, the guardians of the union or parish
within which such pauper is chargeable may take and
appropriate so much of such money, or the produce of
such security, or recover the same as a debt before any
local court, as will reimburse the said guardians for the
amount expended by them, whether on behalf of such
pauper during the period of twelve months prior to such
taking and appropriation, or prior to such proceeding for
the recovery thereof; and in the, event of the death of
any pauper having in his possession or belonging to him
any money or property, the guardians of the union or
parish wherein such pauper shall die may reimburse
themselves the expenses incurred by them in and about
the maintenance of suds pauper at any time during the
twelve months previous to his decease.
LONDON 110SPITAL.—The election for assistant

surgeon took place at this institution on Wednesday,
when Mr. Wordsworth was declared elected to the office.
The result of the poll was as follows:—Votes—Mr.
Gowlland. 147; Mr. Wordsworth, 125. Majority of
votes for Mr. Gowllaud, 22. Proxies—Mr.Wordsworth,
90; Mr. Gowllaud, 45. Majority of proxies, 45. Final
majority for Mr. Wordsworth, 23.
A JONALI'S TitouGnT.—The boat of a whaler was
once knocked several feet in the air by a blow from the
tail of a fish to which it was fast. Upon coming down
the steersman fell into the whale's mouth, and the teeth
of the animal dosed upon his leg. After being in this
terrible position for some time, he was released, picked
up by another boat, and carried on board, where, while
prerarations were making to amputate his crushed limb,
he was asked what be " thought of while in the whale's
mouth?" With the utmost simplicity he replied, ".Why,
I thought she would yield about 60 barrelsl"-IYorth
Btitiyh Mail. . .

THE FUNGUS THEORY OF CHOLERA!

TO THE EEiTOR OF Till' TIMES.
Sir,-1 trust that yell pern.it me to make
few remarks on the letter frorn Dr. Budd, of the
Bristol Infirmary, which I read in Jour paper of
(lay, end which alludes to the publicalion in the
Medical Gazelle of last week and the lborning
Chronicle of last Friday of an alleged discovery of
the cause of cholera made by Messrs. Brittan and
S..vayne, both of the Medical School at Bristol ; to
confirm which discovery Dr. Build comes forward
with his letter, giving it the sanction of his name and
own obervations.

Nothing. tends more to spread error, and make it
palatable, than an off-hand declaration of discoveries
said to be based upon sci,ntifie experiments, and an-
nounced under iespectable authcrity. This is espe-
cially the case, in our days, in the department of
microscopic investigations, and I need not remind you
of Mr. Cross's silicious insect, of Mr. Smee's potato
smut, and, as relating to purer science, to the cz.me
theory of cholera.
The preent dh-covery, it seems, consists in having
detected, by means of the microscqe, the presence of
certain organisms, as Dr. Budd calls them, or live
fungi, in that peculiar species of evacuation in cholera
which has been denominated, from its resemblance,
" the rice-water evacuation."
Supposing the microcope not to have deceived
these observers, nor the rest of the scientific gentle-
men to whom the said objects are stated to have been
submitted, we shall then have a fact asserted which
may be admitted for the present to be a true fact.
But how, I ask, lees that fact explain the cause of
cholera? All that can fairly be said is, that to many
anomalous symptoms which distinguished cholera we
must now add the presence of certain microscopic
bodies in the excretions, just as in many fevers and
ablominal complaints, among other symptoms, we
find the presence of ascarides, or threadworm in the
excretions.

To ascribe rightly to the presence of these fungi in
the human body the cause of cholera, it would be
requisite to show that. the same bodies have been
detected immediately after death in the stomach and
intestines of patients succumbing before the appear-
ance of any rice-water evacuation, as is the case in all
instances of collapse recorded in all parts of Europe,
in India and in America ; and is so strongly dwelt
upon as the only real characteristic of the complaint
by Dr. Shapter, in his recent history of the cholera
in Exeter. Surely, if it is true, as Dr. Budd states
in his third conclusion, that these live fungi have
particular relish for the intestines of men ; that
they can only "develop there;" and are "in-
finitely multiplied by self-propagation" in them ;
giving rise, by their mode of action on the intestines,
to rice-water evacuations,—it will not he difficult to

detect the offenders in fiagrante deliclo, when the
victim, whose body they have infected, dies before
" their mode of action" gives rise to rice-water
evacuations. I ask,—has that been done ?
Is Dr. Budd aware of the numerous pathological
investigations made by Pyragoff, cff St. Petersburgh,
who has caused a series of coloured drawings to be
made of the many and various appearances after death
in cholera patients, of which snenticn was made in
your journal of the Bth of August last ? There the
minutest texture of the mucous membrane of the
intestines was examined, even microscopically, imme-
diately after death from collapse, in truly malignant
cholera cases ; but no such fungi or living organisms
were detected. Yet it isThere, and not in the reor.
bid excreta, that the habitat of this suppeeed cause of
cholera ought to be established by Dr. Budd and
Messrs. Britten and- Swayne. As those observers
have subsequently detected the same offending orga-
nisms or fungi in the air and water of infected places
and cholera districts, it will not be difficult matter
for them to follow them up in their new abode—the
mucous folds of the intestines. Until then I cannot
admit that the presence of any fungi found in the
morbid secretions from a choleraic patient can be an
ante rather than a post faetam phenomenon.
But, granting for a moment that the presence of
these new ltdetected bodies, sporules, cells, fungi, or
organisms, or by whatever other name the micro-
seepic physiologists of the day may choose to deno-
minate them, occasions rice-water evacuations, which,
in their estimation (how wrongfully I need not tell
medical readers), mean malignant cholera, how does
that explain the cause of the disease? It explains
the cause of one of its symptoms without accounting
for the many and more important ones. But the
disease which produces that one symptom, Dr. Budd
says, is the said fungus. Then the funguS is the
cholera, and what is its cause ? In other words,
what causes the fungus to have a being ? Whence
comes it? how is it engendered? Why absent
from England for a number of years, and then appear
again ? Why a single individual in a healthy and
wealthy family, eating of the best food and drinking
filtered water in common, living in a salubrious and
the same locality, breathing the same air, and never
having teen either a sick- nurse or a rice-water ex-
cretion, shall be attacked by the fungi and die, and
no other member besides be effected ? Has not Dr. •
Budd heard of such cases in numbers during the
present epidemic ? Again, wherefore among a body
of soldiers, like the Blues, as I am informed by their
able physician, half a dozen of them shall be attacked
by cholera (by fungi), and not another man in the
regiment afterwards, though they all ate and drank
and breathed at the time, and continue to do so, in
messes or companies, often out of the same dish, out
of the same pail of water, and in precisely the same
atmosphere?
I do not dispute the possibility of some particular
objects having been discovered by the microscope, as
stated by the gentlemen so often named, under the
circumstances they allude to. What I find inadmis-
sible are the conclusions come to most abruptly by
Dr. Budd in his letter ; for they do not tally with the
generality of facts and observations of which the
profession is in possession on the question of cholera.
Can the presence of any fungi entering the human
body explain the fate of 500 men daily sickening and
dying of the cholera within the hour at Ganjam ; or
the destruction of 10,000 men at Jessore ; or the
seizure and falling down of sentinels at their posts,
and of their successor, and of a third and a fourai
substitute—all perishing before the two hours' duty
had been performed ? Whence came the fungi that
destroyed in the only case of cholera which has
occurred at Birmingham, and the four cases at
Cheltenham, and then stopped, without affecting any
other member of those two largo populations ; or,
lastly, CS the number of deaths from cholera is now
diminishing rapidly, are we to suppose, either that
the supply of fungi to be swallowed with food, water,
and air is dimnishing fast ; or that, if we continue to
take in some hundreds of them, they are now become
harmless in their nature, and will not produce cholera?
In conclusion, does not Dr. Budd perceive that he
no more explains the cause of cholera, by giving
existence to an actual entozotic being, than those
writers explain it who talk of a zymotic, atmospheric,
or a telluric poison, his own being a fungoid poison ?
What causes this latter poison ? for that will be the
real cause of the disease.
Dr. Budd declares that he has examined the air and
the water of non-infected places, but never could dis-
cover objects of the same kind (meaning the fungi)
which he invariably found in the air and in every
species of drinking-water obtained from cholera di?.
triets. But the water of those districts, and that, air,
were not infected with cholera in January last. 1 heye
could not have been in either, therefore, any fungi in
existence at that time. What caused them to be pre-
sent at a particular time since ? In a word, what
brought the cholera in those districts in March and
six following months? And so we go on reasoning
always in a circle on this question, which, after all,
is a gut stion referable to every other malady besides
cholera.
I humbly submit, that the acceptation by the
medical world, or the public generally of the doc-
trines contained in the six conclusions adopted hastily,
and without sufficient facts to sustain them, by the
writer of the letter on which I have commented, is
calculated to operate much mischief in many ways,
but especially by leading practitioners from the right
investigation of the disease, which, in its most formi-
dable type, presents symptoms requiring a very dif-
ferent practice indeed from that which would be
necessary did the disorder consist only in the irrita-
tion of the mucous membrane of the alimentary canal
produced by the presence of almost invisible parasitic
bodies.
This it is that has induced me to trouble you with
the present letter.—l remain, yours respectfully,
A. B. GRANVILLE, M.D.

109, Piccadilly, Sept. 26.

A SANITARY DICTATOR.—F. M. the Duke of
Wellington has lung possessed a tolerably decent repu-
tation as a defender of his country. F. M., hon ever,
understands the business of national defence even better
than people generally suppose. For several-months the
British forces, under the generalship of the Noble Duke,
have sustained, comparatively to the rest of the popula-
tion, without loss, the attacks of the common enemy—
the prevailing epidemic. The Times has informed us
how, on the approach of the invader, F. M.- promptly
issued orders to the commanding officers of the House-
hold Troops, and the various garrisons, to set their bar-
racks, outhouses, stables, and quarters in genera), in
order. The consequence is, that the army was never in
better condition. It is much to be wished that F. M., in
addition to his various other offices, was made President
of Sewers, Inspector of Nuisances, Dictator to Parishes,
and Commander-in• Chief—with full military authority—
of the Board of Health. St. Saviour's, and similar dis-
tricts, would speedily become salubrious under martial
law, dispensed by the Duke: and vestrymen and guar-
dians be forced to do their duty against a foe that is as
' little to be trifled with as F. M.—Punch.
There is no diminution in the list of our visitors.
Hotel and lodging house keepers have been busy beyond
all precedent at this period of the year. The Chain
Pier is daily resorted to by hundreds. We are happy
to find that the band of the 7th Dragoon Guards, con-
tinues to enliven .the. town occasionally with music.—
Brig ',ton Gazelle.

CHOLERA AND DIARRIKEA

RETURN OF CASES, SEPT. 26.
TUE mETnoroLis.
SUPERINTENDING REGISTRAR'S DISTRICT-
Donthi.
Cholera. Diarrh.

WEST DISTRICTS.

- 3 0
- 1 1
1 1
- 1 2
- 1 0
- 2 0

Kensington ...
eheisea...
St. George, INnover-square
Wemminster
St. Niattin-in- tai' -Ficlds
St. James, IVvsttnioster
NORTH DISTRICTS
Marliebone

St. Pancra3

Hackney

- 0 2
- 0 0
O 1
2 0
O 0

••• ••• -
CENTRAL DISTRICTS.

St. Giles ..
Strand ...
ITolb-rii Union
ClPrkcnw'ell
St. Luke .
East London
Nest Landon
City of London

• • • '''''...

••• "•'"

• • • ''''''

.. • -""

.•• '''''

EA ST DISTRICTS.

Ehoroili teh
.• •
Bethnal-green ~,
Whin chapd
...
St. George-in• the• East
Stepney ... ~,
Poplar ... ... ~,

• • • '-'''

••• ''''''

••• '''''''

SOUTH DISTRICTS.

St. Saviour, Southwark
St. Olave •
••• •••
Bermondsey ...
St. George, Southwark
Newington
Lambeth
Wandsworth ...
Camberwell ...
Rothcrhithe
Greenwich ...
Lewi4ham •••

Total

••• ...

••• ..-'.

•• • .....

• • • '''''

• 0 • ...''.

• • • '''''

Total deaths from cholera, registered from
Sept. 17, 1848, to Sept. 26, 1849 ... 13,926
Total deaths from cholera, registered from
'Mae 17, 1849, to Sept. 26, 1849

... 12,835