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by many, that this reduplication of the outbreak is a kind
of law of the disease, and that hence the same phenomenon
will mark the late epidemic, and a recurrence of the
outbreak is to be looked for during the present year. There
is however no reason that I know of, beyond that derived
from our own limited metropolitan experience, why an
epidemic of cholera should prevail intermittingly over a
period of two years, rather than why it should prevail over
a period of one year only, or over a period of three or
even four years; and, indeed, in other European countries
and capitals, the disease has presented all the above
varieties of duration. While therefore I think it quite
possible that we may have a renewal of the epidemic this
Summer, I think it by no means improbable that we shall
escape.
Taking the past year as the equivalent of that year of
each of the former epidemics in which the disease was
most fatal, it will be seen that the epidemic of last year
was much less severe than any which has preceded it.
(See Tables V., VI. and VII.) The actual number of fatal
cases of cholera recorded in 1832, was, it is true, less
by some 300 than the number of such cases recorded
last year; but that smaller number was furnished by a very
much smaller population, and represents in reality a far
heavier mortuary rate. In 1849 and 1854 the mortality
was not only relatively but actually much greater than
that of 1866. But further, not only was the relative
mortality from cholera less in 1866 than in former years,
but the cholera field (to use the Registrar Geneial’s