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32
conclusions, let this distinction be recognised:
that which seems to have come to us from the
East is not itself a poison, so much as it is a test
and touchstone of poison. Whatever in its nature
it may be, this at least we know of its operation.
Past millions of scattered population it moves
innocuous. Through the unpolluted atmosphere of
cleanly districts, it migrates silently, without a
blow : that which it can kindle into poison, lies not
there. To the foul, damp breath of low-lying cities
it comes like a spark to powder. Here is contained
that which it can swiftly make destructive,—
soaked into soil, stagnant in water, griming the
pavement, tainting the air—the slow rottenness of
unremoved excrement, to which the first contact of
this foreign ferment brings the occasion of changing
into new and more deadly combinations.
These are matters which it is hateful to hear, and,
believe me, to speak about. But the thing is worse
than the statement; and I would suggest to you
this easy test of its reality. Take at random any
consecutive hundred entries of Cholera-Deaths in
the Registrar-General's metropolitan returns, where
local conditions are described; and let any man
decide for himself, whether what I have sketched
in general terms convey more than the essential
features of these several records. In 1849, such
an atmosphere as these influences engender existed
continuously and intensely on the low-lying south
side of the river, and to some distance inland, from