The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE MORNINU PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TIMES.—It is rune feature of such visitations as
that under which a e still lie, that they bring out the
national character, and, not the least, its defects. The
• sluggishness and independence of operation, the capri-
cious diversity and stubborn incredulity of opinion,
for which the nation is remarkable, may he traced in
bold relief throughout the columns which relate to
the present epidemic. We can afford to make this
admission, because, after all, the worst growler
amongst us, and the warmest admirer of continental
customs, cannot deny that the cholera has hitherto
fallen much more lightly on this than on any foreign
city. Though London cannot boast the clear dry
air of Paris, the never-failing freshness of its splendid
buildings, or the beauty of its ornamental fountains,
yet its proportion of deaths by cholera is only a quar-
ter et that lately suffered by Paris, light as that has
been compared with the devastation of 1832. The result
exactly tallies with the comparative mortality of the
two cities under ordinary circumstances. The truth is
London, in some important respects, is far in advance
of its more pretentious neighbour. Our sewers
are, it is true, still in a disgraceful condition, but a
gulley-hole every now and then is better than a con-
tinual gutter ; the sooty smoke of our coals mocks all
our attempts at external or internal decoration, but it
is not so acrid or subtle as the fumes of wood and
charcoal ; our domestic arrangements for cleanliness
are every way imperfect, but in Paris they have not
so much to be mended as made ; we convert a noble
river into a nuisance, but in Paris the very pavement
reeks with abomination, and Smithfield, bad as it is,
cannot produce the st- ncbes of the Place de la Con-
corde; the abattoirs of Paris and its extramural
cemeteries are patterns to the world, and particularly
to this country ; its site also, on rock and sand, is the
finest in Europe ; but the profligacy and recklessness
_ of the people render them careless of health, not to say
life, and mar the natural advantages of climate and
position. The comparison of London with Paris is
more than satisfactory—it is triumphantsThat, however,
is no reason why we should not look our own errors
calmly in the face, and endeavour to remove them.
The cholera of 1849 is an exact repetition, but with
an increased severity, of that of 1832. The character
of the disease, the path and manner of its approach,
the cities, the localities, and the classes most obnoxious
to its influence, its warning symptoms, and its hope-
less climax, are all the same. It is our fate to be
tried with the recurrence of disasters. At the interval
of 17 years we have had the same political crisis; and
at the interval of 20 years we have seen the same
speculative mania, with the same ruinous conse-
quences. Of course the object of this recurrence was
that we should employ against the second attack the
experience derived from the first, and everybody who
remembers the cholera of 1832 will remember that
such was the general resolution. " The cholera
came upon us unprepared," we then said; "it was
new and unknown ; all our remedies failed,
nor did the time admit of preventive
reforms. We have, however, gained experience. The
disease will now be acclimated, and become periodi-
cally epidemic. Let us prepare in tirre against a
second attack." It seems only the other day that this
language was in everybody's mouth. What is the
result ? We cannot give a better reply than what is
contained in the notification from the General Board
of Health published in Tuesday's Gazette. The
fearful warning of 1832, the slow but certain ap-
proach of the disease over the continent from India to
these isles, the numerous excellent suggestions offered
by the Board of Health as much as a year ago, and
repeated till now, have ended in this—simply this,
that when the disease has carried off 13,000 persons,
we are only just beginning, in a few districts, to
adopt really effective measures of prevention. We
are only just beginning to search out the
cholera in its incipient and curable state, and
arrest its course while under human control,
instead of waiting at our hospitals to receive
the dying, or at our graveyard., to bury the dead.
The actual cholera is an almost hopeless affair.
However medical men may parade their cases of re-
covery, it is questionable whether any patients have
been restored by medicine from a state of collapse.
Even at a much earlier stage we administer our re-
meaies almost by rote, and leave the rest to nature or
to Heaven; so little confidence have we in our know-
ledge of the complaint. There is no doubt, how-
ever, that the cholera is generally preceded by a
premonitory stage, of a very distinct character, which
is by no means intractable; so that if we could only
place the population under circumstances more fa-
vourable to health, with better air, better water, and
more roomy dwellings; and if, further, we could dis-
cover in any individual the first stealthy approaches
of the disease, we should be able to avert, in almost
every instance, the last fatal attack. We are aware
that men apparently in full health and strength
have been suddenly struck down, and cholera has
been not so much a disease as a mere form of death.
In this country, however, such cases are so rare that
we need only concern ourselves with the more known
and general type of the disease—namely, diarrhea
gradually, and by certain known stages, advancing
to cholera. There could be no doubt as to the pre.
cautions proper to be taken against such a complaint
After improvement in drainage and such permanent
conditions of health, the occasional measures neces-
sary were, first, a close and frequent examination of
suspected districts, with a view to discover the in-
cipient disorder; then prompt remedies for cases so
discovered or for any persons spontaneously ap-
plying fur them ; then the removal of persona
threatened with cholera from situations likely to
promote it, and thinning the crowds whose very
number was engendering disease. Amid much that
was desperate, and still mere that was precari-
ous, these measures were of undoubted utility.
The Board of Health has been recommending them
now for a twelvemonth, and suggesting the most
convenient methods. Yet, till within two or three
weeks, none of its suggestions had been adopted.
The most effectual means hitherto discovered for
bringing iucipent cholera under treatment has been
house- to-house visitaion. At the date of the latest
reports to the Board, this plan had only been pursued
little more than a week in B-thnal-green districts, St.
Luke's and Islington, Lambeth, Newington, St.
Oleve's' St. Saviour's, St. George's, Stepney, White-
chapel, Poplar, and Greenwich, in all instances with
a very slender staff of visitors, yet by September 15
they had discovered and brought under individual
treatment 7,819 cases of the various earlier stages of
cholera, only 25 of which, thanks to this visitation,
passed into actual cholera. The value of this visita-
tion has been signally demonstrated by a comparison
with the districts where no such precaution was
taken, and where the mortality remained much as
before. A house-to-house visitation at Sheffield gives
the same gratifying result. Yet this obvious course
has only been adopted in some dozen instances, and
that only just now. The same may he said of other
suggestions, such as the removal of nuisances, the
cleansing of dwellings, the dispersion of crowded dis-
tricts, the separation of those who could be
moved to more open spaces, and houses
of refuge I,r the curable sick; excepting
that these plans have scarcely been adopted in one in-
stance. The still more obvious and peremptory duty
of providing a sufficient medical staff for the sick to
apply to on the first approach of disease, urged as it
has been by the Board for more than a twelvemonth,
has been but rarely and slightly discharged, and in
some cases resisted by the parochial or union authori-
ties. The City of London Union itself, as our readers
will see by the proceedings before the Lord Mayor,
takes the lead in disobedience. In other c uses it has
been administered with repulsive and odious forms of
the New Poor law, notwithstanding the ict that
many persons would rather die of cholera than of
" the union," or of "outdoor relief." Toe epidemic
to all appearance now rages less violently and less
widely ; it is mercifully abated ; and the local autho-
rities of the metropolis have only just begun to make
a stand against it. We have gained great experience,
useless for the present, valuable as it may be
twenty years hence, when we shall most probably
neglect its warnings once more. We are
unwilling to assign base motives to this
scandalous neglect. There is a vis inertia
in society more powerful than its positive sins.
Sluggishness, jealousy of interference, procrastina-
tion, incredulity, downright stupidity, are perhaps
the best names we can find for the thing. An ex-
cuse, however, has been alleged often enough—
oftener, perhaps, than really felt, and thst is economy.
That argument has been disproved a thousand times
before in the discussion of sanitary subjects. In the
present instance it is " Penny wise and pound fool-
ish," for it is obviously better to cure a hundred
cases of diarrhoea then have one widow and her
children on the parish perhaps for ten years. On
this point the Board says—
a_ The most common argument against the immediate
nu energetic adoption of th • preventive measures
directed by the General Board of Health, is their
expense. The epidemic is considered by the Ignorant
as an evil with which it is usel-:ss to grapple; and
among the better informed, a' false economy, valet' has
in some instances 1,-(1 to them tst fatal results, has
been the ground of resiqsnee to
instantly neces.ary to save lire. mtniteit:uire:s
ivehich were
that parochial expenditure cannot be
a'ason of public calamity like the pi esent: Money
a
asvo-i:l:.ldhe known
be spent either in saving li'e or ie the maiste;:ayrimce"ti
pauperism, widowhood, end orphanage. 1n this case,
economy is on the side of burnt:my, and the most ex-
pensive of all things is to do nothing. The ratepayers
should be informed that the want of compliance with the
orders of the General Board of Health on the part of the
boards of guardians of the metropolis has already ens
tailed enormous and lasting expenditure on the parishes,
and that this expenditure is daily augmenting in a vastly
greater ratio than the whole amount required to carry
out the needful.preventive measures. The parish of Lam-
beth, for example, was, up to August 27, already burdened
with 61 cholera widows and 206 cholera orphans,
who must for years remain a costly burden en the parish.
From a small court in Bishopsgate street, Peahen-
court, the parish of St. Ethelburga had already re-