London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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City of London 1866

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for London, City of]

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12
REPORT ON THE CHOLERA OP 1866.
At the close of last year when cholera was still
among us, I had not the opportunity of submitting
to you other than a very general account of its
ravages; but now that it has left us (for the last
recorded death from it in the City, was in the week
ending the 10th day of November, 1866), we are
in a condition to review its progress, and to
examine the facts which have been brought to
light; and firstly, as I have already stated, its
journey to us, and its method of invasion were
peculiar. Instead of coming to us as it did in the
epidemics of 1831-32, and 1848-49, through the
north-western provinces of India, and by Persia to
the shores of the Black Sea and the Caspian, and
thence by the Don, the Danube, and the Volga,
northward and westward through Europe to the
shores of the Baltic, and so into an eastern port of
England, the epidemic of 1865-66 reached us
almost directly from its tropical home through
Arabia, the lied Sea, and the Mediterranean. And
again, excepting the third great visitation in 1854,
which did not come from the East, but was
developed from foci already existing on the
Continent, both the previous epidemics (1832 and
1848) occupied years in their progress from India.
Not so, however, with the last; for it liardly took