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become distributed throughout the country, not
generally, but by local outbreaks. The fact that
Cholera, though obviously not directly contagious,
or at all events not directly contagious in a high
degree, yet had some mysterious relation with the
movements of mankind, and never broke out in any
isolated country or town without having been
distinctly imported into it by human agency, was
manifestly opposed to the theory of its causation
which has been referred to, and which had generally
prevailled. Dr. Snow, now some years since, first
shrewdly suspected that the Cholera contagium or
poison was contained in the Cholera evacuations,
and that the disease was propagated by the entrance
of minute quantities of such evacutions, for the
most part through the medium of contaminated
water, into the alimentary canal. And numerous
subsequent investigations, some of the most remarkable
being conducted by himself, have entirely
confirmed the correctness of his prevision. The
matter is so important that I may quote a few of the
best established and most striking cases.
The Cholera epidemic of 1849 was specially
severe in the South of London, which was supplied
with drinking water mainly from surface wells and
by two water companies, the Southwark and Vauxhall,
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