“How did it happen, if the character of the water has a great influence
on the mortality from cholera, that in the Belgrave district only 28
persons in 10,000 died, and in the Westminster district, also supplied
by the Chelsea Company, 68 persons in 10,000; and, again, that in the
Wandsworth district the mortality was only 100, and in the district of
St. Olave 181 in 10,000 inhabitants—both these districts receiving their
supply from the Southwark Company?”
The water of the Chelsea Company has been alluded to above, but whether
this water had any share in the propagation of cholera or not, it is
perfectly in accordance with the mode of communication of the disease
which I am advocating, that it should spread more in the crowded
habitations of the poor, in Westminster, than in the commodious houses
of the Belgrave district. In examining the effect of polluted water as a
medium of the cholera poison, it is necessary to bear constantly in mind
the more direct way in which the poison is also swallowed, as I
explained in the commencement of this work. As regards St. Olave’s and
Wandsworth, Dr. Baly was apparently not aware that, whilst almost every
house in the first of these districts is supplied by the water company,
and has no other supply, the pipes of the company extend to only a part
of the Wandsworth district, a large part of it having only pump-wells.
The epidemic of 1849 was a continuance or revival of that which
commenced in the autumn of 1848, and there are some circumstances
connected with the first cases which are very remarkable, and well
worthy of notice. It has been already stated (page 3) that the first
case of decided Asiatic cholera in London, in the autumn of 1848, was
that of a seaman from Hamburgh, and that the next case occurred in the
very room in which the first patient died. These cases occurred in
Horsleydown, close to the Thames. In the evening of the day on which the
second case occurred in Horsleydown, a man was taken ill in Lower Fore
Street, Lambeth, and died on the following morning. At the same time
that this case occurred in Lambeth, the first of a series of cases
occurred in White Hart Court, Duke Street, Chelsea, near the river. A
day or two afterwards, there was a case at 3, Harp Court, Fleet Street.
The next case occurred on October 2nd, on board the hulk _Justitia_,
lying off Woolwich; and the next to this in Lower Fore Street, Lambeth,
three doors from where a previous case had occurred. The first thirteen
cases were all situated in the localities just mentioned; and on October
5th there were two cases in Spitalfields.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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