View report page

23
MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
that the local predilections of this dreadful disease
are so marked and so obstinate, that we may almost
certainly predict in what parts of the metropolis it
would tend to arise on any renewed visitation. We
may anticipate that at any such time its latent power
of destruction will kindle again in the districts, the
streets, the houses, perhaps even in the very rooms,
where it recently prevailed, unless the determining
local conditions shall previously have been annulled.
It would be ridiculous if I should pretend to
carry you into any medical consideration of this
subject, or should make my present Report the
vehicle of a professional argument; but I may very
briefly acquaint you with such generalisations as
will justify you in pursuing a particular course with
respect to the haunts of cholera. While doing so,
I hope your Honourable Court will believe that I
have devoted to this very serious subject the best
consideration of which I am capable, and have done
my utmost to arrive at conclusions which may be
fruitful of practical good.
Cholera visited no localities of which it could be
said, that they were generally healthy; but still there
seemed to be something peculiar and specific in the
kind of local unhealthiness which determined its
invasion. On the one hand, it is unquestionably
true that many habitual seats of fever were visited
by cholera; on the other hand, many of the worst
fever-nests in the whole metropolis were unaffected
by it; and it struck with extreme severity in a class
C 2