The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1884-07-29
TO PREVENT CHOLERA.
Important Memorandum Issued
by the New York Board Of
Health.

New York Times.
The State Board of Health consid-
ers the facilities and possibility for
the introduction of cholera into this
country too obvious to be disregarded,
AMI therefore a memorandum on pre-
ventive measures against the disease
has been issued. The history of
former invasions of cholera, says the
board, warrants the belief that its re-
appearance here is probable. Chol-
era, which in two months in midsum-
mer in 1865 DESTROYED $4,000 lives
in Egypt, reached France and Ger
many by September, and was discov-
cred at the New York quarantine as
early as November. In 1866 it again
threatened the United States. 1t
fingered in the west, was returned to
Governors island and thence found
a new departure in 1867, when it was
terribly destructive in some sections.
The outbreak in the Mississippi val
ley in 1873, was traced to its intro
duction by way of New Orleans. The
disease, as reported in Southern Eu-
rope, presents the same threatening
aspect, thinks the board, as it did in
August, 1865, when it was conveyed
to our shores in a definite manner,
and to the same series of resting places
and fatal points of outbreak that it
now threatens to attack.
The facilities of the introduction of
the disease have increased since 1865,
but the means of exact sanitary knowl-
edge and quarantine police for arrest
ing and stamping out the transport
able cause of it are also greater. No
city which is fully prepared for the
announcement that Asiatic cholera
has come need be invaded by it if
proper sanitary care is exercised.
The foods throughout Europe and
the United States, the attendant cir
cumstances of the drying period, the
increased immigration from the Medi-
terranean states to New York, and
the destructive malignancy of the dis
ease, all give warning to be ready
for Asiatic cholera.
There is, says the state board, a
specific infective cause of Asiatic
cholera, called its consagium, by
which it spreads as rapidly as the
persons suffering, ever SO lightly, from
it 60 from place to place. In every
country where the contagium exists it
has caused to be repropagated beyond
the sanitary lines which separate the
cleansed, drained and ventilated
premises and well-conditioned inhab-
itants from the filthy, or where
polluted food and water and harmful
beverages prepare the system for the
fatal operation of the poison. For
cholera to be diffused from continent
to Continent it must have as factors
for lis cultivation center OF pollution
for its cradle, ship tor its transport
and number of towns prepared for
Its reception and development. Local
conditions of danger-the sanitary
neglects that have prepared for
Judgment and repropagation of the
cholera in filthy places and sodden
grounds-are found in every port, city
and village and in many rural ham
lets, The prevention of propagation
is very difficult after the diseaee has
obtained a foothold in any of the
commercial centers. The presence Of
filth. stagnant pools, polluted water,
and badly housed and imprudent
people will invite cholera to hundreds
of places in the state if it once
appears In any port. "Now," says
the board, "before the exotic infection
has come, let all local boards of health
and all householders lose no time in
enforcing such thorough scavenging
and cleansing. such cleaning of sewers,
drains and bitches, and such venti-
lating, drying, lime-washing and dis
injecting of cellars and all damp and
unclean places that if cholera comes
Its infective germs shall find no soil or
foul surface in which to propagate
epidemicaIly."
The contagion is not chiefly taken
from the bodies of the sick, but the
virus is proved to require the concur
renee of attendant conditions of |
moisture and filth to produce any ex-
tended series of cases. One great
source of danger is that the exotic
germinel matter becomes not only in
fective of persons exposed to it by
water or the atmosphere, but may, by
its infinite rapidity of reproduction,
under favoring conditions of foul air
and filth, rapidly becoming epidemic
within the limits of such impurity.
Sanitary barriers must therefore be
erected before cholera comes. As
soon as found the disease must be
treated by vigorous insulation and
i