Science from an Easy ChairLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
Science from an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history; Science
Cholera gradually made its way in subsequent years through Persia to
Russia, and at last to Western Europe; but it was not until late in the
year 1831 that Indian cholera arrived for the first time in England, and
in the following year it caused something like a panic. There have been
at least three subsequent outbursts of Indian cholera (before that of
the year 1908) which have reached Europe, and two of these have reached
England and caused profound alarm and anxiety. That in 1854 reached us
just before the Crimean War, and caused such rapid and numerous deaths
in London, especially in the West End (St. James’s, Westminster), that
the corpses were removed in carts as in the days of the plague. It was
then that the Broad Street pump became famous, and the carefully
demonstrated history of a cesspool leaking into the well of the pump, of
the existence of a cholera patient in the house to which the cesspool
was attached and of the infection with cholera of healthy people who
sent all the way from Hampstead to fetch what they thought was the
beautifully pure, cool, and palatable water of Broad Street, St.
James’s, caused a most vivid and salutary impression on the public mind.
The “water-carriage” of the cholera infection was established as a fact,
and the subsequent abolition of surface wells and pumps, as well as of
cesspools, in London and other cities was the result. Indeed, the active
development of sanitation and sanitary measures of all kinds in Great
Britain may be traced to the panic caused by the cholera in 1854 and to
the well-founded conviction that it was in the power of the community,
by the construction of sewers and the provision of untainted
water-supply, to protect itself against such disaster in the future.
Years passed by, and still the actual germ of cholera was unknown. In
India it was not even admitted that its diffusion was especially
connected with water-supply. The methods of observing with the
microscope those minute swarming organisms which are called “bacteria”
became immensely improved. They were isolated, cultivated in purity, and
the activity of a vast number of different kinds of different shapes,
sizes, and modes of growth was ascertained. They were distinguished
according to their shape as bacilli, spirilla, micrococci, and so on,
and separate kinds were characterised—one producing ordinary
putrefaction, another the souring of milk, another the “cheesing” of the
same fluid, another the destruction of teeth and of bone, another the
terrible anthrax of cattle or wool-sorters’ disease, another (a spiral
thread in the blood this!) the recurrent fever of East Europe—each
producing its own special poison or other chemical substance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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