Maryland free press., 1866-05-31
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Cholera.

gress, for although it has unquestionably
the greatest affinity for low, damp situa-
tons, on the banks of rivers or near pools
and ponds of water, crowded population
and filth, yet it sometimes flies off, tangent
wise, in different direction. The annals
of the disease show that when it made its
appearance in camp or a city, so far from
extending to every habitation, it was al
most always confined to particular portions
of even the most populous places. Some
times, in an army, as happened in India,
one or two regiments encamped together
were the only sufferers from an attack of
the disease. One locality in one street
only of town had the disease existing in
it-indeed its presence has been known to
be limited to one side of mark ct place.
Removing a camp few miles has fire.
quently put an entirestop t9the occurrence
of new cases. When cholera prevailed
destructivcly in a village, the natives often
got rid of it by deserting their houses for
time, though. in so doing, they neces-
sarily exposed themselves to many discom-
forts, which would commonly be regarded
as exciting causes of this disease. Its rate
ofprogress is very irregular and capricious
After its first appearance in India, in 1917,
it took only one year to span the base of
that peninsula, while twenty years were
required for it to compass the globe. The
period between its being in Bassorah and
Damascus was four years; a caravan would
traverse the same space in about as many
months. In Russia, Prussia and Austria,
countries in which the greatest efforts we're
made by sanitary cordons and the most
rigid quarantine regulations to set limits to
the disease, the periods between the attacks
in cities and districts were not any longer
than in India, where the most unrestrained
intercourse by sea and land along the rivers
and roads was allowed. Cholera, though
appearing so fatally in the camp, did not
show itself in Allahabad for four months
afterwards, and yet the intercourse be-
tween this town and the camp was very
great. Whatever line we may assume,
we cannot observe any regular order of sue
cession in which different cities were at
tackled, either along rivers OF on the great
highroads between capital cities. Some
times the disease approaches a town or
village, and then passes round it, to return
after the lapse of weeks, or even months.
We can hardly give stronger example of
the difficulty of explaining by any known
law of transmission or order of succession
of an attack of cholera than its sudden ap-
pearance in 1882 in the heart of Paris,
the first city in France to suffer from the
pestilence. Equally sudden and unex-
pected was the bound, as it were, of the
disease from Montreal to the city of New
York, in the same year. AT Riga, on the
Baltic, cholera made its appearance stimuli
taneously in different places-the suburbs,
in the catadel and in the town proper. The
inhabitants of Hamburg, in 1891, looking
with anxiety towards Prussia and the coun-
try eastward, and cnlisting all the means
in their power by sanitary cordons and
quarantine to prevent the disease from ap-
preaching in that quarter, found it suddenly
appear in the midst of them rising, as it
were, out of the earth, from deep cellar,
whose inmates were its first victims.
Incxplicable is the tenacity with which
cholera adhercs to a certain number of
persons, while'it passes over others on the
same spot and to all appearances similarly
circumstanced. In one of our vistatons,
says DR.. Meiklc, long medical officer in
active service in India, two or three compa-
nies on the right of the line were attacked
with cholera and there it continued for
upwards of a month, without attacking a
single individual in the lines of the other
companies. They we're daily exercised
together, went to the same bazaar for their
food, and drew water out of the same we'll
1t is generally held to be certain that
cholera is not in any sense contagious =
Wherever there has been opportunity tc
trace its origin, there seems to have beer
something either in the person or in the
locality to predispose that person Or tina
locality to an attack, and the prcdisposine
causes are badly drained premises, accu
mutation of offal and garbage, dirty ant
badly ventilated houses, foul cellars, yard
and outhouses, stagnant puddles and ponds
filthiness of person and dress, unwholesom,
food, excesses in eating or drinking, ant
nervous anxiety and alarm. Most of thes
causes, if not all of them, are within con
troll Let in the sunlight and air, cleal
all the foul places, use whitewash ant
chloride of lime freely, keep the persol
clean, be temperate in all things, and ayoi'