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4
of the disease at various spots in the country will
not be capable of causing much injury to the population,
if the places receiving the infection have
had the advantage of proper sanitary administration;
and, in order that all local populations may make
their self-defence as effective as they can, it will be
well for them to have regard to the present state of
knowledge concerning the mode in which epidemics
of Cholera (at least in this country) are produced.
4. 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 diarrhoea 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 infective. Probably, under
ordinary circumstances, the patient has no power
of infecting other persons except by means of these
discharges; nor any power of infecting even by
them except in so far as particles of them are enabled