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15
health of entire London is vitally dependent, I could
not but comment* on the utter unpreparedness with
which the metropolis was awaiting any sudden
return of Asiatic cholera. It was indeed impossible
to foresee how soon, or how late, that dreadful
visitation might recur to desolate our homes—
whether it might return at once, or never. But
typhus—averaging in fifteen years double the
fatality of that rarer epidemic, was adding day by
day to its list of preventable deaths; and other
endemic diseases were co-operating with it, demonstrably,
uninterruptedly, to decimate, impoverish
and abase the people.
Whatever doubts might have existed as to a
return of the foreign pestilence were soon solved:
whatever hasty conclusions had been formed, as to
its again remaining absent during half a generation,
were soon disappointed and reversed. Even while
I was addressing you on the subject, the plague
had again kindled its smouldering fire, and was
widening its circle of destruction. Perhaps from
the eastern centres of its habitual dominion—from
the alluvial swamps and malarious jungles of Asia,
where it was first engendered amid miles of vaporous
poison, and still broods over wasted nations as an
agent of innumerable death; or perhaps from the
congenial flats of Eastern Europe, where it may have
lingered latent and acclimatised; the subtle ferment
* Third Annual Report, p. 40.