Cholera visited no localities of which it could be said, that they were generally healthy; but still there seemed to be something peculiar and specific in the kind of local unhealthiness which determined its invasion. On the one hand, it is unquestionably true that many habitual seats of fever were visited by cholera; on the other hand, many of the worst fever-nests in the whole metropolis were unaffected by it; and it struck with extreme severity in a class of houses habitually exempt from fever. See, for instance, how malignantly it prevailed along the line of Farringdon and New Bridge streets, and in Fleet-street and Ludgate hill, where their line intersects that just mentioned; and here, you will observe, not only in those obscure and ill-ventilated courts and by-ways, where fever is the familiar visitant of a hungry and crowded population; but also, and very strikingly, in spacious and airy houses, situate along the main thoroughfare of the City, and inhabited by opulent tradesmen, by members of the various professions, or by officers of assurance-companies. Other infective diseases which habitually desolate the former class of dwellings are almost unknown in the latter. Cholera came as a startling exception. _Within the infected district_ (fulfilling the classical description of pale death) it trod with equal foot the gates of rich and poor.[40] [40] ---- Æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres. I think it very important that this fact should be fully recognised. In London it has often been overlooked, from the accident that our most infectable districts happen to contain an excess of poor population. But even here it is quite easy to note that the disease spreads irrespectively of pauperism or privation; and in other cities, (Paris and Copenhagen, for instance) where the quarters of rich and poor are less apart than in London, cholera has killed its full share of dignitaries and capitalists.--J. S., 1854. Personal peculiarities, or vicious habits, or temporary indiscretion, may often have determined its choice of a victim; low nourishment--even temporary emptiness and exhaustion, very manifestly invited its attack; but, speaking generally, I may say that it was a disease prevailing over a certain patch of ground, and (within this limit) tending to strike equally, or nearly equally, in all classes of habitations. Crowdedness of dwellings, defective ventilation, squalor of inhabitants, and many forms of local nuisance, which are omnipotent in giving occasion to fever, and in adding malignity to many disorders of its class, did not by themselves exert so marked and specific a power in determining the onset of cholera.