Morning journal and courier., 1883-08-31

had immediately followed change of wind, which caused it to set over this marsh toward the back of the poorhouse. With this clew, the singular phenomena of the outbreak were at once found applicable. All the first cases occurred in the back rooms of the building,
 and the number and severity of them bore a
 most remarkable relation to the local condi- tions which made one part of it rather than
 another the recipient of the fatal germ bear
 ing air currents. The cause being thus de- tected, effectual measures were Immediately
 taken to antagonize it's action, and the plague
 was at once stayed.
 Professor Tyndall may recollect being
 present, some years ago, at Sion college when
 brought this case before an assembly of
 cIergymen in an address on the Reign of
 Law and asked whether any of my hearers
 believed that if all BalEmore had gone down
 on it's knees for week in penitence and prayer, without taking the human means dic-
 tated by the study of the laws of their di-
 vine government, and of the consequences of
 the infraction of them, this favorable result
 would have been brought about. My third
 case, which was in some respects even more striking, was related to me by an old fellow
 student, who had been in Mexico at the time when the cholera epidemic reached that coun- try, and was residing in town (whose name forget) of about twenty thousand in- habitants, situated on level plateau on mountain side at 8 considerable elevation. He noticed that large proportion of the earlier cases occurred along a particular line, and that the subsistence of the disease along this line was followed by sudden out break of the like kind along another line at an angle with the first; and he further noticed that this second outbreak had been immediately preceded by change of wind. Strongly suspecting, therefore, that the choleraic IniRsmRta must have been waited along each line from common focus, he
 ran the two lines together as 8 bee!hunter a~.1 ok k1AS- 1s,,k aR gence an enclosed yard containing an enor- nous heap of filth. What doubt can be reasonably entertained that this heap had served as the indus in which the cholera germs had propagated, and from which l they had been atmospherically conveyed? s'In one important respect, however, the Baltimore case is yet more instructive. since 1 all the evidence there pointed to an origi- | nal atmospheric implantation of the disease germs in the miasmatic marsh in which they bred, and from which their multiplied progeny were waited to the unfortunate 1 inmates of the poorhouse for there had | not been, as in all the known instances of poisoning by water supply, any previous case within the building from which the primal germs could have been furnished; while
 the local conditions precluded the idea that | the marsh could have been contaminated by l any other direct human communication. In l the light of these cases, to which many more
 might be added, I hold it to be at the same time unscientifc and unsafe to limit the
 breeding-ground of cholera germs to the hu- man intestine, and to affirm that they can | neither propagate themselves in focal or
 other decomposing organic matter outside
 the living body nor be introduced into it
 otherwise than through the mouth. Profes- sor Tyndan lays great stress on the analogy \ of typhoid, but he must be aware that some \ of our best authorities do not admit his ex-
 elusive doctrine, even in regard to that dis
 ease. And even if that doctrine were con-
 clusively established, it could not invalidate l the evidence I have now adduced in proof of
 the atmospheric diffusion of cholera germs
 bred outside the human body; since, if
 am not mistaken, there are no cases on record l of sudden and simultaneous outbreaks of ty- phoid under conditions at all parallel,'