3. Finally, gentlemen--in the probable anticipation that next year Cholera will prevail in London with at least its former severity, it may be claimed of my office, that I should say something with respect to personal precautions for avoidance of the disease. While most willing to place at your disposal any useful results of my practical experience in the matter, I cannot but feel the great difficulty of making general suggestions in a form really capable of particular application. From the eminently local prevalence of the poison, it may be inferred that, for all whose circumstances allow an option in the matter, the first and most important precaution would consist in avoiding those localities where the epidemic is active. Our knowledge of the subject enables us confidently to say that, if in one spot the chance of being attacked by Cholera is as 1 to 100, in another it becomes 1 to 50, in a third 1 to 5, in a fourth almost an equal chance whether to be attacked or not. Nothing is gained towards security by the mere act of leaving our metropolitan area, if one resorts to some other place where the system of drainage is equally vicious, or where--as at our nearest bathing-place, the beach is made almost as offensive by sewage as here the river-banks.[86] From earlier statements in my Report, it will be obvious to you that the eligible sites of residence are those which stand high and dry, with clean effectual drainage of their soils and houses, conveying all organic refuse beyond range of the local atmosphere. [86] Unless the sanitary improvement of Brighton be soon set about in earnest, the reputation for healthiness, which established its prosperity, will undergo a very sensible reverse. The natural advantages of the place are now almost neutralised by the evil adverted to in the text, and by other filthinesses of the kind.--J. S., 1854. I will not pass this part of the subject without admitting that the course here suggested might involve a considerable desertion of particular localities, and a transient injury to their commerce. This unavoidable result of proclaiming the laws of the disease, I must regret in regard of its personal bearings. But the facts of the case are all-important for the public; and sanitary improvement will perhaps move more quickly in the country, when it is known that the pecuniary prosperity of places may suffer from their reputation for endemic disease. In case of Cholera prevailing with severity in spots containing a dense poor population, great assistance would be given to medical and sanitary measures, if a number of empty unlet houses, healthily situated, were at the disposal of the authorities; into which, under proper regulations, they might induce certain of the poorest families to migrate for a time, as to places of refuge, till the disease should have subsided about their original dwellings.