The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-09 00:00:00

TEE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, AUGUST 9, 1866.

123 respectively, the ordinary weekly average being
18. The local committee applying for the grant yes-
terday did not enter into details of distress, but
assured the Mansion-house committee that it is most
appalling and is increasing. They had relieved dis-
tress for one week, during which about 150 families
had received help ; but the number of applicants
was continually increasing as the charity became
better known. In Mile-end New-town the Sanitary
Committee have commenced a house-to-house visi-
tation of the hamlet, and there is not a street in it in
which there are not some cases of cholera and
diarrhoea. The house-to-home inspection com-
menced yesterday morning, and disclosed many cases
of extreme distress, occasioned solely by sickness
and death. The Rev. A. B. Sutter said there were
11,000 people in his parish, and only one family in
it kept a cook. Mr. J. Young, jun., a common
councilman, called the attention of the committee to
the state of a district just beyond the city bounda-
ries, and including Tower-hill and the neighbour-
hood abutting upon the St. Katherine Docks. He
said 60 or 70 cases of cholera had occurred in the
district, and there had been 16 fresh cases since
Tuesday last, 12 of which were absolute cases of
cholera, and a case had occurred yesterday in the
parish of All Hallows, Barking, within the city.
In the course of the proceedings yesterday the
Lord Mayor stated that a suggestion had been made
to him from a quarter entitled to respect, and
which he thought was worthy the attention of all
whom it might concern--namely, that it was desir-
able in many respects, and especially with a view
to a uniform system of relief, that the Bishop of
London's fund and all other kindred ones should be
merged in that of the Mansion-house Committee.
The suggestion met with the unanimous approval of
the Committee, but of course the sanction of the
Bishop of London and of other parties interested is
necessary before it can be carried into effect.

A slight diminution took place yesterday in the
number of cholera cases brought to the London
Hospital, the figures, as compared with the previous
day, being 18 instead of 22. Of the new admis-
sions, 10 were cases of cholera, and 8 of diarrhoea.
The deaths during the same period also show a
satisfactory diminution, the total being 8 (7 from
cholera and 1 from diarrhcea), as against 11 on the
previous day. The recoveries were 8 ; 6 from
cholera and 2 from diarrhoea. The applicants for
out-door treatment in the period in question were
234 in number. Those still under treatment in the
cholera wards are stated to amount to 110. In the
workhouse of St. George's-in-the-East the new
vagrant wards have been formed into cholera wards,
and they are excellently adapted for the purpose,
being large and well ventilated. The number of
cases under treatment there yesterday was 22.
Since the outbreak 71 other cases of cholera and 7
of diarrhcea have occurred within the walls. The
deaths have been fearfully numerous, 61 of the
cholera cases and 4 of those of diarrhoea having
proved fatal ; only 10 persons recovering from the
former and 3 from the latter. The local Board of
Works have divided the district into nine sections,
and placed a medical map over each. The pressure
of the epidemic has been very great. Since the 22d
of July 506 cases of cholera, exclusive of those in
the workhouse, and about 4,500 cases of diarrhcea
have been treated by these nine doctors. The deaths
from cholera have been about 170, and from diarrhcea
7, up to last Saturday.
Since Friday last two deaths have taken place
from cholera at Appledore, in Devonshire, and an
additional death at Charlestown, Cornwall.

A Timely Word about the Cholera.

(From the Examiner.)

Cholera poison has, like other poisons, its specific
action. It excites the copious discharges we see ;
it acts also as an irritant upon the muscular tissue.
This is shown by the severe cramps that it pro-
duces. Thus it acts on the muscular tissue of the
arteries, exciting contraction, and the effect of
this in the network of the capillary vessels
that spread the blood over the air cells in the
lungs is so to contract them that the blood
enters them with great difficulty, or is unable to
enter them at all. This is the cause of the collapse ;
in popular phrase, cramp of the capillaries of the
lungs.
The venous blood goes into the chambers on the
right side of the heart, which pumps it into the lungs
for aeration. After aeration it goes from the lungs
into the chambers of the left side of the heart, which
force it through the arteries for the nutrition of the
body. Thus the lungs lie on the blood's route from
the right side of the heart to the left. Contraction
of the capillaries of the lungs establishes here a
blockade, and after death from the collapse of cholera
we find the right side of the heart, and its communi-
cations with the lungs, usually gorged with blood,
the lung itself unusually bloodless, and the left side
of the heart almost or altogether empty and con-
tracted. Thus there is little or no aeration or che-
mical combustion in the lungs. Hence blueness of
the body and coldness even of the breath. There
is little or no blood for the arterial side of the heart
to propel. Hence the faint pulse, almost no
pulse, the shrunken features, the fallen eye, and
all that depends on the absence of the vital
fluid that plumps out and colours, while it animates
the organs of the body. The action of the irritant
poison may cause a contraction of those muscular
coats of the capillaries of the lungs so suddenly that
a strong man may fall in a fit, struck with the col-
lapse of cholera, as sailors did in the Black Sea. Also,
after the contraction has passed away and the blood
has been setflowing again, if its sudden rush into the
their engorgement, the
by
yrom drowning, and the
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eg sf
so
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cs
oe
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patient is well in a day or two, and able to go
abroad.

That is, in a few words, the gist of Dr. Johnson's
pathological discovery. k He has not laid hold of the
cholera poison itself, analysed it, or found an anti-
dote for it. But he says, given the poison in the blood
and it may get there—experience shows, through
the lungs or through the stomach—Nature's effort
is to save life by expelling it out of the body. If it
be not expelled, then, as an accomplished pathologist,
Dr Johnson is the first to tell us how it acts upon
the system, and produces the effects we see.

Of course the treatment to which this points is, to
seek the quickest and safest way of getting rid of
the poison, and on no account to lock it in the sys-
tem by checking the discharges with an opiate before
they have done their appointed work. Now that the
epidemic is again upon us, Dr. Johnson publishes a
little pamphlet of counsels, the second brochure on
our list, and prefixes to his counsels an approving
account of his theory which was contributed to the
Saturday Review by the most eminent of our physi-
cians, and having said that, it is superfluous to
name Sir Thomas Watson.
We quote here a few sentences containing that
part of Dr. Johnson's counsel which is of most use
to the public generally :

Darrheoa during an epidemic season is in many instances,
though not in all, an early stage or a mild form of cholera;
and in the great majority of cases of actual cholera, an
attack of bilious diarrhoeamarks the onset of the disease. A
diarrhoea, when it is not the actual beginning
of cholera,
will.weaken the patient, and so may predispose him to
suffer from the more serious form of disease. Diarrlicea,
therefore, ought not to be neglected even for an hour.
That plan of treatment for diarrhoea is obviously the best
which most speedily and completely puts a stop to the
disease, without subsequent ill effects.
It may be stated as a general proposition, that the imme-
diate cause of diarrhoea or looseness of the bowels is the
presence of offending materials in the alimentary canal.
Those offending materials are of various kinds in different
classes of cases. In one case, unwholesome and undigested
food is the exciting cause of the purging ; in another case,
a large and unnatural accumulation of the faiculent con-
tents of the bowels: while, in another class of cases,
noxious secretions are poured from the blool into the
bowels, in consequence of the action of a morbid poison
upon some of the ingredients of the blood. To this last
class of cases belongs what is called choleraic diarrhoea.
The most reasonable theory of choleraic diarrhoea is,
that a morbid poison enters the blood either with the air
through the lungs, or with the food and drink through
the alimentary canal ; and that this poison excites certain
changes in the blood, in consequence of which some blood
materials are spoiled, and thus rendered not only useless,
but noxious. These morbidly-changed blood materials are
then discharged from the blood-vessels through the mu-
cous membrane of the stomach and bowels, and are ulti-
mately ejected by vomiting and purging.
Various as are the remote and p rim ary causes of diarrhoea,