Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/526

510 fashion does good drainage act in cleansing our towns, and the necessity of a pure water-supply is thus vindicated. It is in this way that, according to my view, cleanliness acts as a deterrent to cholera. Cholera-germs may come, but they can not fructify under such circumstances. That sites naturally exist which, without human interference, are unfavorable to cholera, has already been shown.

Where water entirely fails the organic processes soon come to an end; this is true of the soil of the earth. In rainless deserts the soil is dry except the most superficial layer during the night. In such desert places no organic processes can go on; this is shown not only in the absence of vegetation, but may be proved by an investigation of the nature of the air of the soil ("Grundlutt"); this air under ordinary circumstances contains much carbonic acid, which proceeds from the processes of organic life; but where the soil is free from water the air of the soil much more closely resembles that of the atmosphere above it. This fact has been experimentally proved by Professor von Zittel by a comparison of the free atmosphere with the air of the soil of the Libyan Desert. These observations are believed to explain how it is that cholera does not appear on a very dry soil. Just as too much water is bad for certain plants, so is it also for some members of the lowest class of the vegetable kingdom. It is likewise conceivable that the organic processes in the soil on which epidemics of cholera depend may be effectually checked by an excess of subsoil-water or by a want of material. Micro-organisms have been divided into two classes: anaerobe and aerobe. If now we have to deal with an organism which requires oxygen for its existence (aerobe), it is not difficult to understand how the excess of water might deprive the soil of the necessary proportion of air. The more the pores were filled with water the less air would be contained in the soil. In heavy clay soils the water drives the air completely out, and thorough desiccation would be required to replace all the air. Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli have already discovered a micro-organism which flourishes only in a moist soil containing air—the bacillus malariæ.

We shall now inquire into the time relations of cholera at its permanent home in Lower Bengal. Dr. John Macpherson has, in his work on "Cholera in its Home," tabulated the number of cases of death from cholera in Calcutta for each month of the year for a period of twenty-six years. I have calculated and arranged in a tabular form from these statistics the average number of deaths in each month, and contrasted each month with the average rainfall at Calcutta. (See Table I.) It will be seen how unequally distributed is the great fall of rain, which is two or three times greater than in many districts of Germany. Calcutta has a rainy season, which begins at the end of May and ends at the beginning of October. The cholera decreases from the beginning and increases again toward the end of the rainy season. It reaches its maximum during the driest and hot months