Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 87, March, 1875Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 87, March, 1875
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
And this evil fame still clings to Munich, in spite of all that has
been done to improve its condition, and of all that has been written
to purge it of its contempt. Efforts of the latter kind have indeed
been prodigious, increasing with the growing importance of the place
as a centre of education in science and art. Local medical authorities
issue from time to time ingenious pamphlets on hygienic
investigations, with particular application to the suspicion under
which their city labors in this regard; the newspapers keep up the
whitewashing process with diligence, not forgetting to hold up
frequently before their readers the sanitary shortcomings of Vienna
and Berlin; nay, the traveler is met at the very threshold of his
hotel by a tiny tract containing not only a list of the principal
sights, but also a comforting assurance that the climate is not so bad
as has been represented, and that by wearing sufficient wrappings and
avoiding the ordinary drinking water, strangers may hope to accomplish
their visit and escape unharmed. Surely no other city takes such
benevolent pains to reassure its inhabitants and instruct and warn its
stranger-guests: perhaps it is because deeds have not kept pace with
words that assertion and argument have hitherto failed of the desired
effect. The protracted, repeated cholera epidemic of 1873-74 may well
challenge a close observation of the situation, surroundings and
sanitary condition of Munich as a means of ascertaining the causes of
this exceptional visitation, as well as of the continual existence of
an indigenous disease which, more than almost any other, is dependent
upon circumstances within the power of man to control.
Instead, therefore, of constructing the cholera and the typhus out of
our "inner consciousness," as certain of the physicians and hygienists
of Munich, in true German fashion, appear disposed to do, let us look
at some of the facts of the case--facts sufficiently obvious to be
perceptible to any person of intelligence, and the nature of which is
so well understood as to be accepted at once as bearing closely upon
the subject in question.
And first, as to climate. Considering that the cholera, from which
Munich suffers more at every visitation than almost any other European
city, and typhus, which is always at home within its limits, are not,
properly speaking, climatal diseases, it would seem at first sight
unnecessary to consider the situation of Munich in this respect. But
while the principal object of the present paper is to indicate the
causes of the above-mentioned plagues, the fact should not be lost
sight of that nearly all known diseases flourish in this unfortunate
city, many of them owing to its exceptionally bad climate, while the
sudden and extreme changes of temperature which occur in every season
of the year have a tendency to aggravate those ills which find their
sources in more preventable conditions.
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