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is capable of rapid growth and multiplication
within the human intestine, and which feeds
on and destroys the mucous coat of the
bowel. It would seem too, from the experiments
of Dr. Thiersch, of Munich, and of
Dr. Sanderson, of London, on mice fed with
paper saturated with choleraic matter, that
the alvine discharges are not infectious in
their fresh condition; but that after the
fourth day and up perhaps to the eighteenth
day, they possess infectious power. If further
experiments give a conclusive value to
these results, their importance cannot be overestimated
; for it points to the means of at
once arresting the course of the epidemic by
the quick destruction of the alvine discharges,
and of all things that are soiled by
them.
14 and lastly.—It is unquestionable that
active sanitary measures employed even during
the visitation of an epidemic, are of the
greatest value in checking its course. The
differences in the force of the disease at its
several visitations to the City afford ample
proof of the usefulness of your sanitary
measures; and standing, as the City does,
on the confines of the cholera field of 1866,
I have no doubt that the active operations