View report page

102
diseases, conveyed by the atmosphere and inhaled into the
lungs, but is conveyed by the food and taken into the
stomach, upon which and on the bowels it acts as a violent
poison.
If these views be correct it is easy to understand
many facts about cholera, which have hitherto seemed
anomalous and inexplicable; it is easy to understand how
it is that Physicians and nurses, and others in attendance
on cholera-patients, in cleanly Hospitals, houses and other
institutions, so constantly escape the disease, although
constantly inhaling their breath and other exhalations: it
is easy to understand how, from the accidental admixture of
cholera-poison with their water, the disease may be limited
to the area which a single Water Company supplies; it is
easy to understand how by means of a single pump,
which has become by chance infected, an outbreak limited
to a house or two only may occur; it is easy to understand
how in houses which are overcrowded and uncleanly and
among uncleanly persons, especially therefore among the
poor, the evacuations from a single case of cholera which
has occurred among them may poison their pots and their
pans, their persons and their clothes, may thus become
mixed with their water and their food, and keep up
among them such a continuance of the disease as was
experienced in Stockwell Street.
Again, if these views be correct, it shews us that the
main reasons why cholera proved so much less serious last
year then on former occasions, especially why it proved
so much less serious amongst us on the South of the River,