Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/654

636 deaths, in the following week there were sixty-seven, and then the mortality as quickly subsided as it had arisen. No satisfactory solution of this mysterious outbreak presented itself until Dr. Snow was called in to examine the water supplies. His published report shows the clearly marked incidence of the disease on those who drank from the parish pump. The workers in one particular factory where the water was always used suffered severely from cholera, while those in an adjoining brewery, where the water was never touched, escaped, and numerous instances of fatal attacks of cholera following the use of the treacherously sparkling water from this pump are detailed. On the drains of the house adjoining the well being opened, it was found that there was a cesspool under a common privy, within three feet of the well, and at a higher level than that of the water in it; that the walls of the cesspool being rotten, the contents leaked into the surrounding soil; that the walls of the well were also rotten, and that there was distinct evidence of the cesspool contents having for a long time leaked into the well. Then came the startling fact that in the house itself a child aged five months had died on September 2d, of so-called "diarrha," but with distinctly choleraic symptoms.

In 1866 England was again invaded by cholera, and that epidemic is memorable for the terrible experiment which was unconsciously carried out by a water company at the expense of some four thousand lives in East London. Early in the outbreak I was struck by its incidence on the area supplied by the East London Water Company, and I felt confident that it could only be due to a sudden specific pollution of the water supply. Acting on behalf of a great medical journal, I dispatched the late Mr. J. Netten Radcliffe—who had not then become attached to the Medical Department of the Privy Council—to investigate the matter. After much trouble, the result showed that owing to changes having been made in their filtering apparatus, the company had sent out for a few days unfiltered water, or water in a very partially filtered state, direct from the river Lee, which had just at that moment become infected with choleraic discharges from a cottage, the sewers of which were connected with the river, and in which a family had come to reside who had reached Southampton infected with cholera and had been allowed to pass on after they were supposed to have recovered.

These things are now ancient history, and are only here repeated as an illustration of the fact that wherever a single outbreak can be isolated and examined separately, without the intrusion of cases of cholera from round about, the disease is seen to be obviously carried to the patients' mouths by the water which