“Bermondsey, St. James. At 10, Marine Street, on 25th July, a mate
mariner, aged 34 years, Asiatic cholera 101 hours, after premonitory
diarrhœa 16¹⁄₂ hours. The medical attendant states: ‘This patient was
the chief mate to a steam-vessel taking stores to and bringing home
invalids from the Baltic Fleet. Three weeks ago he brought home in his
cabin the soiled linen of an officer who had been ill. The linen was
washed and returned.’”
The time when this steam-vessel arrived in the Thames with the soiled
linen on board, was a few days before the first cases of cholera
appeared in London, and these first cases were chiefly amongst persons
connected with the shipping in the river. It is not improbable therefore
that a few simple precautions, with respect to the communications with
the Baltic Fleet, might have saved London from the cholera this year, or
at all events greatly retarded its appearance.
As the epidemic advanced, the disproportion between the number of cases
in houses supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Company and those
supplied by the Lambeth Company, became not quite so great, although it
continued very striking. In the beginning of the epidemic the cases
appear to have been almost altogether produced through the agency of the
Thames water obtained amongst the sewers; and the small number of cases
occurring in houses not so supplied, might be accounted for by the fact
of persons not keeping always at home and taking all their meals in the
houses in which they live; but as the epidemic advanced it would
necessarily spread amongst the customers of the Lambeth Company, as in
parts of London where the water was not in fault, by all the usual means
of its communication. The two subjoined tables, VII and VIII, show the
number of fatal attacks in houses supplied respectively by the two
Companies, in all the sub-districts to which their water extends. The
cases in table VII, are again included in the larger number which appear
in the next table. The sub-districts are arranged in three groups, as
they were in table VI, illustrating the epidemic of 1853.
In table VIII, showing the mortality in the first seven weeks of the
epidemic, the water supply is the result of my own personal inquiry, in
every case, in all the sub-districts to which the supply of the Lambeth
Company extends; but in some of the sub-districts supplied only by the
Southwark and Vauxhall Company, the inquiry of Mr. Whiting having
extended only to 5th August, the water supply of the last three weeks is
calculated to have been in the same proportion by the Company, or by
pump wells, etc., as in the first four weeks,—a calculation which is
perfectly fair, and must be very near the truth. The sub-districts in
which the supply is partly founded on computation, are marked with an
asterisk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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