Polynesian., 1850-02-09

{NUs 81
the intervening towns had yet taken the in
fection. Four months aiterward Gin Feb,
| 1892, Edinburg was attacked, and few
weeks later the disease appeared in Dublin.
1t spread gradually throughout Great Britain
and Ireland, and destroyed about 30, 600
persons. Calais and Paris were affected
nearly simultaneously in March, 1882 not,
therefore, as might have been expected, by
Progression of the disease from Germany
along the Rhine, but obviously by reverted
stream from England. Fromthese centres the
epidemic spread through France, sometimes
from town to town, sometimes apparently by
lears to distant and isolated points The
mortality in this country was much greater
than in Britain, Paris alone losing upward
Of $1,000 persons. Three months later
June, 1892, the pestilence appeared at
Quebec. In the same month it broke out
at New York, and, spreading rapidly, raw
aged nearly the whole American continent.
While the western stream of virus was
thus rapidly completing the circuit of the
globe, a reflex current, travelling more
slowly from England in south-easterly di-
rection. attacked Lisbon and Madrid in 1888,
spread during 1884 throughout the Peninsula,
injecting the British Garrison at Gibraltar,
penetrated in 1915 to Piedmont, Genoa,
and Florence, (Which the Alps, it would
seem, had previously protected, reached
Naples in 1886, and Rome in 1887.
| At Naples, a rigorous quarantine proved
utterly Intellectual. The city was surrounded
with military cordons; the smitten were pitt
lessly torn from their beds, and isolated in a
distant hospital; the physicians traversed the
streets, covered from head to foot in black
sacks of waxen canvass, with glasses inserted
to see through. These terrific measures
spread such panic that 80, 600 fed in few
days; the popuace, declaring the food to be
poisoned, began to rise; the King found it
necessary, for their pacifcation, to walk
through the most infected streets, to partake
Of the suspected bread, and to suspend the
obnoxious quarantine regulations.
| Marseilles and Touon, which had eseaped.
strangely enough, when France was first
overrun, were attacked by the retrocrade
current in 1885; and from those ports the
disorder was carried to Algiers, which it
ravaged in 1887. and whence it spread along
the northern coast of Africa In the same
;. year (ls37) Malta was attacked most Sc
vereIy, losing in IL weeks 3,7S4 persons
disease seems to have become evanescent
! From this rapid outline it will be seen that
the Cholera of 1917, in its course to Eng
land, had three periods of active progress,
separated by two pauses. Two years it took
to overrun India; two to pass through Persia
to the Caspian Sea; and two 10 spread through
Central Europe to Great Britain. During
two years it paused in its career on the
I l.
it smouldered on the eastern verge of Eu-
rope. The two southern PeninsuIas Of
Europe, isolated in great measure by the
Alps and the Pyrenees, enjoyed further
special respite; nor was it till 20 years after
its outbreak in Bengal that this terrible plague
had fetched the compass Of the habitable
globe. In its westward progress the disease
was observed to have added to its former
terrors a new and most destructive feature
the consecutive fever; Of which thousands
pershed after surviving the stage Of collapse.
| After lingering in each country attacked
for two or three years after the date Of its
arrival, the Cholera subsided in Europe
In India, however, it became endemic, ra-
ging yearly for period Of several months,
and yearly exciting the lveliest apprehen-
sions, lest it should burst its bounds and
however, was done to prevent second in
vason, or to meet it, if it should occur. The
track of Cholera has been abundantly proved
to be that ofTyphus, both diseases attacking
especially persons debilitated by over-work,
insufficient diet, damp, crowded lodging,
and close, mephtic air. Everywhere the
squalid abodes of the poor and their mise
rable inmates had been the chief seats and
subjects of the disease Yet the filth of Lon
don was left to ferment in its 800 900 cess
pools the foul tidal ditches of Bermondsey,
Shoreditch, and Lambeth, still loaded with
their stencil the stagnant air and every
year 40, 900 more corpses were added to the
sodden mass of putresence on which our
Metropolic stands. And what is true Of
London is true also Of Moscow and Peters
burgh, of Berlin, Vienna, and Paris of
Lisbon, Madrid, and Rome. Everywhere
apathy and incidence followed on the sub
sidence of panic.
| OF that apathy and that Incidence Europe
is at this moment suffering the consequence.
The pestilence now raging has pursued, with
but little deviations, the track of its prede-
cessor, travelling, however, more rapidly
and committing fiercer ravages than before.
MANY cities-as, for instance, Petersburg
and Berlin-were attacked at the same sea-
son, and even in the same month, in lSl7,
as In 1880. The same streets-nay, the
very same houses-that Suffered most Sc
verely before, are suffering most severely
now; and towns which, like Birrnine ham,
| escaped in 1880, are again enjoying SIM
liar immunity.
GENERosIrr.--A young gentleman recent