View report page

89
as expressing the exact truth; for on the one hand it
includes all cases returned as English cholera, summer
cholera, and choleraic diarrhoea, which may or may not
have been cases of the epidemic disease; while on the other
hand it is by no means improbable that some of the deaths
ascribed to diarrhoea may have been really due to the
influence of the choleraic poison. This consideration
is not altogether unimportant, for I have reason to believe
that some of the comparatively numerous deaths ascribed
to cholera in our parish, during the earlier weeks of the
epidemic, were not really due to epidemic cholera.
Of most of the cases which occurred prior to the 28th
July, and of a few that occurred subsequently to this date,
I heard nothing until I received information through the
Registrar General's returns And in consequence of this
want of information, most of the early cases were insufficiently
investigated, and little was done to arrest the
spread of disease from them.
Most of the cases which occurred in this Parish were
more or less isolated cases with little or no disposition to
spread. (See Table VIII.) But there were also several
groups of cases, which in a medical point of view were
highly interesting and significant. The first of these
groups occurred in the family of a fishmonger, living at
175, Camberwell Road. In this case, 3 children died of
cholera, 2 on the 14th, and 1 on the 21st July. The
premises had been kept, we were told, in an uneleanly
state: but when they were inspected, they were perfectly
clean, and their drainage and water supply were in