View report page

22
preventatives of cholera are a cheerful mind and a temperate
life; and, were I to write a book, I could not say more. Fear,
by depressing the powers of the mind and body, favours the reception
of the disease. Systematic rules of diet have been laid
down. I cannot approve of them; surely that diet is the best
which keeps a man in a healthy state, and which enables him to
pass comfortably through the daily wear and tear of life, and
must, necessarily, be as variable as the constitution of every
individual; and every one who observes himself, must certainly
know what that diet, is or should be. All sudden changes of
food in time of cholera, are imprudent and dangerous.
But there is a class of men particularly liable to the malady,
and to whom I would give a word of advice (for this report will
go before the public), I mean the habitual drinkers of ardent
spirits. In the experience of three epidemics which I have witnessed,
one in France, and two in England; I have invariably
found that they are the first, yes, the very first victims of
cholera. Indeed, it stands to reason that it should be so.
Whatever cholera may be, its first symptoms show themselves
in the abdominal viscera, and what is the state of these viscera
in the confirmed spirit-drinker? His stomach is perpetually
congested, his appetite gone; his liver, like the worm of a
whiskey-still, has alcohol always passing through it, and is
generally functionally, and often organically diseased, and
makes him a ready recipient for the complaint. Every dram
of raw spirit is, in time of epidemic, a predisposing cause of
cholera, and let those of our industrious classes who are fond of
morning potations, take timely advice— There is death in the
cup. Yours respectfully,
November, 1857. W. MURDOCH.
TWENTY-THIRD REPORT.
Gentlemen,
Variocs complaints having been made to me, by inhabitants
of the part of Rotherhithe called Jamaica Level, and by owners
of property in that district, of an intolerable nuisance occasioned
by the casting of the mud of the mill-stream near the houses.
I proceeded thither on the 12th November, and on several other
occasions, and can state the following facts; namely, that the mud
of the main channel, from its southern extremity, opposite Cork'sgardeh
to a spot near Moreton-cottages, had been recently cast
up. Part of it had been thrown against the western bank, where
there is a public footway, but not on the footway, and only in
sufficient quantity to mend the gaps that time had made on the