Cholera’s History and Spread
Dr. Pettenkofer has written a very full historical resumè of cholera facts, and the London Lancet gives a good translation of the original German. Some facts are well worth glancing at. Cholera has existed in India from time immemorial, but it did not reach Europe until 1830. Then it came by the way of Russia. It cannot make a sea voyage of twenty days. If we could not cross the ocean to Europe in less than twenty days, cholera would never reach us. Since the first arrival in Europe, cholera has been supplied with relatively numerous and expeditious lines of travel, and the penalty Europe pays for close connection with India is, in part, cholera visitations. There are unfavorable land routes. Cholera never gets over deserts which require more than twenty days for caravans to cross. South America enjoyed exemption from cholera until 1854, when fast-sailing vessels carried it from Philadelphia to Rio de Janeiro, and a terrible epidemic was the result. Cholera makes the most remarkable jumps. It regularly jumps from Marseilles to Paris, right through Lyons, the second city of France. In Munich it has established itself three times (1836, 1854, 1873), but always in houses of the suburbs, situated on a clay soil. Cholera prefers low-lying situations; the disease falls off in hills and mountains. The Himalayas and the Alps are places of refuge in cholera seasons, though now and then an epidemic occurs there.—Sel.