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there had been, during the preceding five
years, a progressive increase in the whole
class of zymotic disease—amounting to an
excess of 31 above the average—the diseases
which chiefly contributed to this excess
were typhus, scarlet-fever, influenza and diarrhoea.*
A like increase in nearly the same
diseases, preceded the epidemic of 1854, as
if the public health was below the standard,
and the conditions existed for the development
of zymotic maladies. Not so, however,
at the coming of the last epidemic ; for,
excepting a very slight increase in the proportion
of deaths from typhus and small-pox,
there was nothing to indicate an unfavourable
state of the public health ; and diarrhoea,
the common precursor of cholera, was much
less prevalent and fatal than usual.
7. That the habitats of the disease are
low and marshy ground, along the margin
of tidal rivers, where the soil is porous, and
is sodden with animal excreta and where
the population is dense and not of cleanly
habits. It has, however, its eccentricities
of selection; for sometimes it will fix itself
* Report of the General Board of Health on the Epidemic Cholera of
1848-9.