Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/774

754 light, and prove that the type of an epidemic has nothing to do with the smallness or largeness of the number of people affected. The suppression of the cholera at Hardwar toward the east and south and the increase of it in the west and southwest are inexplicable phenomena [Bryden ought to have said, for the contagionists]. But the phenomena are not difficult to understand if the preconceived theory be laid aside. If we take Hardwar as the central point at which the gathering on April 12th was infected, then it will be found that the pilgrims died only in those districts which were reached within a limited time after their daily march had begun. The great majority of fatal cases did not occur at Hardwar, but in those regions which were reached within the first few days after leaving Hardwar. It seems to me that the end of the outbreak at Hardwar was pretty much the same as that of local outbreaks elsewhere, and I can see no connection between the epidemic of cholera in the Punjaub in May and the return home of the pilgrims." The movement the cholera had taken in the autumn of 1866 led Bryden to say, "I believe that the geographical distribution of cholera in 1867 would not have been very different, even supposing that the gathering of the pilgrims had never taken place." And Bryden is perfectly right, for in 1862, for example, the cholera in India became remarkably widely spread without cholera having broken out among the pilgrims at Hardwar.

Such epidemiological facts, which cry aloud for the truth of the existence of local and time predisposition, stand as sure, as etiological elements, as the discovery of a microscopic organism in the intestines of cholera-patients. Only ignorance and prejudice can ignore such facts. It is but a necessary logical conclusion that the comma bacillus, if it have anything to do with the infective material of cholera, must also have some relationship with the local and time conditions which favor cholera. And, further, the relationship must be discovered by the bacteriologists before they can explain an epidemic by the aid of their bacilli and before practical rules can be framed thereon.

Another objection to the views of the contagionists is found in the behavior of cholera on board ships. Long before I announced my views on local conditions, the epidemics of cholera, not only on the rocks of Malta and Gibraltar, but also on ships, were brought as witnesses against my doctrines. What can soil and ground-water have to do with epidemics on ships? And although I had found nothing but confirmatory evidence of my views, still the contagionists remained obdurate. As I can not suppose that all my readers are sufficiently acquainted with my observations on cholera in ships, I must be allowed to give a few illustrations. The contagionists, referring to cases in which epidemics occur during the voyage from Europe and America, say that such can only be explained on the view of infection of one case from another. The facts of such epidemic outbreaks are known to all. How often do such attacks occur? As an instance, I shall