II. Two years ago--adverting to the non-completion of metropolitan sanitary works, on which the health of entire London is vitally dependent, I could not but comment[77] on the utter unpreparedness with which the metropolis was awaiting any sudden return of Asiatic cholera. It was indeed impossible to foresee how soon, or how late, that dreadful visitation might recur to desolate our homes--whether it might return at once, or never. But typhus--averaging in fifteen years double the fatality of that rarer epidemic--was adding day by day to its list of preventable deaths; and other endemic diseases were co-operating with it, demonstrably, uninterruptedly, to decimate, impoverish, and abase the people. [77] Third Annual Report, p. 206. Whatever doubts might have existed as to a return of the foreign pestilence were soon solved: whatever hasty conclusions had been formed, as to its again remaining absent during half a generation, were soon disappointed and reversed. Even while I was addressing you on the subject, the plague had again kindled its smouldering fire, and was widening its circle of destruction. Perhaps from the eastern centres of its habitual dominion--from the alluvial swamps and malarious jungles of Asia, where it was first engendered amid miles of vaporous poison, and still broods over wasted nations as the agent of innumerable deaths; or perhaps from the congenial flats of Eastern Europe, where it may have lingered latent and acclimatised; the subtle ferment was spreading its new infection to all kindred soils. Repelled again from the dry and airy acclivities of the earth, and their hardier population, it filtered along the blending-line of land and water--the shore, the river-bank, and the marsh. Conducted by the Oder and Vistula from the swamps of Poland to the ports of the Baltic, it raged east and west, from St. Petersburg to Copenhagen, with frightful severity, and, obedient to old precedents, let us witness its arrival at Hamburg. Twice in the European history of cholera, had this town seemed the immediate channel of epidemic communication to our island; the disease having on each occasion commenced in our north-eastern sea-ports within a very short time of its outburst there. A third time, not unexpectedly, has this dreadful guest, following the line of former visitation, touched upon the banks of the Tyne; where[78] a worse than beastly condition of the crowded poor, and sewage-water diluted through the people’s drink, had prepared it an appropriate welcome. [78] Having had recent occasion to examine judicially into the matters here adverted to, I think it proper to mention that the allusions in my text were long prior to this examination, and were founded chiefly on the Registrar-General’s Reports of the time, with other official statements.--J. S., 1854.