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which, diffusing itself from country to country,
gives to the prevailing maladies a Choleraic character,
and produces, where local circumstances are
favourable, an outbreak of the fully developed
disease. In favour of the dependence of Cholera
on some miasm or epidemic constitution was the
striking fact, that although Cholera afflicted large
numbers of persons within a short time, there
was little evidence of its communicability by direct
contagion. It was noticed, and has been constantly
observed, that nurses and medical attendants seldom,
if ever, take the disease from patients under
their charge, and that the introduction of Cholera
patients into a general hospital is by no means
necessarily followed by the communication of the
disease to other patients.
Nevertheless, it has always happened that the
spread of Cholera epidemics has followed lines of
traffic, showing that human intercourse, not winds,
has been instrumental in its propagation. In every
invasion of this country, the disease has first been
distinctly imported into our seaport towns by the
arrival thither of infected persons from infected
localities, and has thence been carried by like means
to other localities in relation with them by railways
or other lines of traffic, and has thus gradually