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separate cistern should be used for drinking water.
When there is only one cistern, a water waste
preventer should be used to break the connection
between the cistern and the W.C.
When epidemic cholera is prevalent in any locality.
it is important that no case of diarrhæa should
be neglected. The diarrhoeal discharges should be
disinfected as if they were certainly known to be
those of cholera. The closets and drains of the
house should be daily flushed with chloride of lime
and water.
The present state of knowledge concerning the
mode in which epidemics of cholera (at least in
this country) are produced is ably and concisely
expressed by Dr. Buchanan, the Medical Officer of
the Local Government Board, as follows: —
"Cholera in England shows itself so little contagious,
in the sense in which Small Pox and
Scarlatina are commonly called contagious, that, if
reasonable care be taken where it is present, there
is almost no risk that the disease will spread to
persons who nurse and otherwise closely attend
upon the sick. But Cholera has a certain peculiar
infectiveness of its own, which, where local conditions
assist, can operate with terrible force, and
at considerable distances from the sick. It is
characteristic of Cholera (and as much so of the
slight cases where Diarrhœa is the only symptom as
of the disease in its more developed and alarming
forms) that all matters which the patient discharges
from his stomach and bowels are, or can
become, infective. Probably, under ordinary
circumstances, the patient has no power of infecting
other persons except by means of these discharges;