National Republican., 1883-07-27
As1Ar1C CHOLERA COMING.
Its Cycle OF Seventeen Years--opinions OF
Eminent Physicians on the Scourge--
Recollections OF the Past.
Philadelphia Times.


Philadelphia Times
Fresh by cable comes the warning so fraught
with dreadful meaning to those who know
anything about the pestilential presence of
cholera in the London docks. To the COM
paratively few persons still living who re-
member the narrowing scenes enacted in
Philadelphia during the epidemic of 1882,
when the dead bodies were hauled in carts
by scores and dumped into bitches, and to
the many who have still fresh in memory
the alarm attending the prevalence of the
grim Asiatc destroyer in certain parts of
this city in 1866, it needs no closer prox-
unity than the other side of the Atlantic
to arouse apprehension bordering upon
alarm With twenty transatlantic steam
ers week coming to our ports, London,
Liverpool, and Glasgow are at our very
doors. There are many physicians in the
city who have had experience with cholera in
past years, and great many other thought
full people who feel that there is good cause
for an extraordinary and undelayed activity
on the part of the health authorities to insti-
tute precautionary sanitary measures.
Though science may hereafter show that the
phenomena of the rise and travel of this mys-
terious plague at regular periods and over the
same path is to be explained by natural and
existing causes, there is no escape from the
suggestive circumstances that during the past
western Europe, especially on the coast con-
nected closely by ocean navigation with this
country, it has very soon afterward made its
appearance III the larger American cities.
The history of the epidemic, according to the
late Surgeon General Woodworth, who made
and exhaustive inquiry into the subject at the
suggestion of congress, demonstrates that the
disease appears wherever there are routes OF
human intercourse; that the infection is in
variably confined to such routes, and that tho
rapdity of its advance is regulated by the
rate of human travel, so that, rs the speed of
ocean immigrant steamships has increased, so
has the time between its appearance in Europe
and its transfer to this country been leasened
DIR. Philip Leidy, whose long experience as
port physician and connection with the health
department, makes him an authority, was
found yesterday afternoon, by a singular coin
cidence, surrounded with books engaged in
the study of the history and etiology of past
cholera epidemics. 81 think it very likely"
he said, that we shall have at least a touch
of it in Philadelphia this year. 1t is travel
ing in just the same track that it followed in
other years. There is nee for the utmost
vigilance 1t is of not much use to think of
n fire department after half IA town is burned,
and it is a great mistake to defer the consid-
Grafton of this important matter until the cpl
demiC is at our doors l believe, and am sup
ported in my views by most of the authorities,
that quarantine is not an etlectual pre-
ventive against the introduction of the
cholera but nevertheless, there should be
precautions, and, above all, the points should
be carefully watched whence it is likely to
come. Prompt and authoritative informa-
tion should be given to threatened ports of
the shipment of passengers or goods from any
place where cholera exists. But even that
may not avail. Persons familiar with cholera
history know that vessels with clean bills of
health from places where cholera was unheard
of have developed cases in md-ocean. 1t is
even thought that epidemic atmospheres have
been encountered at sea by different vessels a
thousand miles apart. DR.. Edward Goodeve,
an eminent English authority, whose late
work have before me, says: Thus chol-
era seems to have spread east south, west and
north from its first birth place in Bengal,
which became only the center of an epidemic
area comprising nearly all the world 1t trav-
eled slowly at first, and not continuously, but
irregular waves, checked sometimes, but not
destroyed, by winter cold. Neither climate
nor season, nor earth nor ocean seem to
have arrested its course or to have altered its
features. 1t was equally destructive at st.
Petersburg and Moscow as IL was in India
as fierce and irresistible among the SHOWS OF
Russia as in the sunburnt regions of India;
as destructive in the vapOry districts of Bur
nah as in the parched provinces of Hindoos-
tam am inclined to believe that there are
periods when it starts up and follows regu-
lar course and that there are atmospheric con-
ditions which IL seeks and on which it flour
ishes. 1t can jump across sea as well rs not
and perhaps is governed by some law OF which
we as yet not know nothing We know as yet,
almost nothing about it, and all we can do is
to be p repaired the best we can"