Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1884-07-19

after that occurred in the city. The same
authority tells US that the net work of Eng
lisb sanitary provisions and defenses abso-
lutely kept the cholera out of England from
1866 to 1873 Only few weeks ago the
Crocodile troop ship came into Portsmouth
from Bombay with cholera on board Of
Asiatic type, and by strict quarantine the
disease was prevented from getting any
footing on shore. About the same time a
and quarantine being neglected, the disease
spread on shore and the world knows the
result This ship, the Sarthe, sailed from
Saigon late in March. The last case OF
cholera upon her was April 9th, and the
ship did not arrive at Toulon until about
the middle of June The clothing and
effects of some soldiers who had died in
Tonquin were sold from the Sarthe in the
harbor of Toulon, by auction The next
day a man who was cleaning the ship went
down with the cholera and the disease at
once spread fastening its fangs most deeply
upon a pest hole in the harbor filled with
| foul drainage. This would all tend to show
| that DR.. Koch is wrong in his theory of the
germ not being transmissible where the
chOleraic waste from the body has had am
pie time to dry. 1t is barely possible that
some of the clothing had remained suffi-
GENTLY damp to retain the germ alive but
this is scarcely probable especially as the
officers of the ship prove that the clothing
of all the cholera patients had been de
stroyed at sea.
Dr. Peters, health official of New York,
and an eminent authority on cholera, holds
that quarantine against the disease is effect
i've, provided it is regulated as in England,
concerning which he says;
There they only quarantine vessels for from
three TO six days and Ill that time do more than
is done elsewhere in the regular forty days.
Here is a case in point Some years ago a for
eigner arrived in England from Havre He was
Frustrated by cholera soon after his arrival. He
was put in hospital questioned as to the route
he had taken, and then Sir the English officials
went over that route visited the houses he had
visited and disinfected everyone of them. So
they stamped out the disease. In this country
the officials have at times been shamefully neg
ligent. Would you believe, for example, that in
1923 emigrants suffering from cholera were al
lowed to land in this country, and that that is
the reason why the records OF public health
during May, June and July of that year have
been suppressed? nice tale they would tell
wouldn't they? In the same way yellow fever
has been brought into this country, and God
knows if similar encouragement Will not yet
expose us to the same scourge.
He further recites that the contagion may
be spread by clothing and even by letters
and tells Of Dutch family, nine in num-
Der, that died of cholera in one of the
Western States A negro appropriated a
coat belonging to one of them and took il
into the kitchen of lunatic asylum where
he was employed. A second negro pur-
Joined the coat and wore it. The two
negroes died within two or three days In
a similar manner woman and her daugh-
ter, who walked for nine days from Odessa
to Altenburg, in Saxony, spread the cpl
demic through the whole of Saxony The
doctor adds that thorough quarantining is
the only possible guard against cholera,
though even that may not always be sue
cessful. The notion that the epidemic is
e in the air" and consequently unavoidable
is absurd, as it has been clearly proved that |
it is both portable and communicable.
1t is eleven years since the cholera !
scourged Europe. In the interval there
has been great sanitary activity, and Eu-
rope and America should be, and unques-
tionably are, better prepared to resist the
disease than they were eleven years ago.
Of course there may be some new develop |
ments for which there have been no suf- |
ticient preparations. For instance, the dis
ease has for the first time come direct to |
is to say, it has not made its
advent by either of the two great routes it
has heretofore pursued out of India and |
out of Egypt, and this is a fact to be in
luired into at length. But while the in
creased commerce of the world, and the !
means of transportation have |
the ease with which the cholera |
travels, and given speed TO a disease that
has been set down as slow in progression
over the world, it is TO be kept in mind that
it is more comfortable than ever before, be-
cause of the increased knowledge we have
Of it, and of the food upon which it lives.
We understand better than ever before how
10 care for those sick with the disease; we
know we must practice no concealment,
must vigorously apply sanitary regulations,
adapt our methods of living to the char
acter of the menace of the plague, and con-
uol our fears in its presence. These things
enable the civilized world to very greatly
the bounds of the pest, and to
limit its i'll. Thus while our commercial /
exposes us TO new risks, the |
sum Of human knowledge due |
to the attrition of scientific views and
has provided US with filter
weapons of defense. so that we are vastly
better Off than were the people Of a cen
fury ago, notwithstanding that our expo
sure is greater than was theirs.
THE STATE CONVENTION.
The Republican State Convention is to
meet in this city next week 1t viii prob
ably, in accordance with custom, make a
platform Ii might very well omit that
I