labelled POISON. The high road followed by
the epidemic is indicated by the currents. The
movement of translation towards the pole, performed
by the hot air expanded in the tropics,
is accomplished in a north-westerly direction.
Hence we see the cholera successively attacking
Arabia, Egypt, Persia, Turkey, and the Russian
Empire. The atmospheric current, towards the
close of its course, experiences a check which
lasts two or three months. A deviation then
takes places towards the west, namely, in the
direction of Denmark, Prussia, and Great
Britain. Then the atmospheric column returns
towards the south, and France, Spain, Tunis,
and Algeria, are attacked by the disease. Ever
since 1817 the cholera has invariably followed
this route.

The cholera, thus pouncing down upon its
victims from the upper regions of the atmosphere,
explains sporadic or dispersed cases
which appear here and there without apparent
reason, quite unconnected with other cases, and
in localities reputed healthy. An unseen whirlwind,
a restricted boiling up and down of the
atmosphere, a hole drilled in a stratum of air by
sudden heats or electrical action, may allow
the descent of sufficient mephitic atoms to introduce
cholera where it is least expected. This
circumstance alone suffices to demonstrate the
folly of running away. The fugitive is just as
likely to exchange the frying-pan for the fire, or
to quit security for danger, as to escape effectually
from an evil which is only apprehended.

With reference to this, a sensible letter in the
Times urges that the most powerful predisposing
occasion, if not cause, of an attack during
the epidemic, is fear. It seems to depress the
whole physical system, and to place it at the
mercy of the dominant plague. It does not
create the disease, but it lays the sufferer open
to the entrance and action of its poison. Its
earliest victims are the terror-stricken. We are
gregarious creatures. One acts upon another,
and feeling is contagious. Each soldier in a
regiment derives stimulus to his courage or his
fears from his comrades. An intrepid and self-possessed
officer is as good as a battalion.
Whatever, therefore, sustains the hearts of the
people during the visitation of an epidemic is of
greater value than physic. Every man of rank,
clergyman, physician, and every chief of department
should, therefore, be at his post when the
epidemic strikes. Immunity does not lie in
flight. This is a very practical fact. Be it
that the fugitives carry in them, or with them,
the seeds of disease, or are predisposed by being
depressed by fear, or otherwise affected, cannot
be affirmed; but that many runaways fall victims
to cholera, is fact. Perhaps they that remain
become inured, are, so to speak, vaccinated,
and gain the day. Whatever be the
solution, this is certain, the post of duty is the
post of safety.

In the beginning of last August the disease
made its first appearance in Ancona, and it
immediately spread widely and rapidly, in consequence
of the imprudence of persons who ought
to have known better. Several most indiscreet
medical men raised the fears of the population
to panic-pitch by trumpeting as loudly as they
could the news of the malady's arrival. Out of
a population, reduced by emigration to fifteen
thousand in the town itself, and ten thousand
in the environs, the deaths in the course of the
first ten days amounted to more than fifteen
hundred. The mortality, there can be little
doubt, was occasioned quite as much by fright
as by cholera. The syndic, or mayor, Count
Fazioli, set the example of devotedness, in which
he was seconded by his secretary, a stout-hearted
young Piedmontese; but, of the other
municipal functionaries, Assessor Marinelli was
the only one who did not quit his post, bearing
the burden which ought to have been shared by
others. Nor did the fugitives gain much by
their cowardice. At Loretto, Sinigaglia, and
Civita Nuova, indeed, they were received with
brotherly hospitality; but in other neighbouring
towns they were very coldly looked upon, while
elsewhere indifference was carried to the point
of cruelty. At Porto Recanati, the captain of
the National Guard headed those who pursued
the fugitives. Several other towns distinguished
themselves in this crusade against the unwelcome
immigrants. At Monte Santa the municipality
ordered domiciliary visits, to discover
and expel the Anconitans who had taken refuge
in certain houses; at Ertona and Gullanara
their entrance was repulsed by gentle pressure
with the bayonet and the revolver.

And now for the solidarity of Europe and
Hindostan. We believe that we know where
cholera comes from. How can we prevent its
return? Bengal is the most fertile country in
the world. The mud of the Ganges, the source
of terrible epidemics, may serve still further to
increase its fertility. Instead of spending hundreds
of thousands of pounds, and sacrificing
thousands of men in useless and ruinous expeditions,
why should not Europe form a coalition
against the scourge which periodically decimates
it, and, by canalising the delta of the Ganges,
render it cultivable, and, by means of the consequent
drainage, healthy, or, at least, no longer
a focus of pestilential emanations?

Have we already so much rice, tobacco, indigo,
cotton, and sugar in the world that more
is utterly superfluous, even if raised within easy
reach of water-carriage? By the opening of
the Isthmus of Suez, Bengal will soon be in
direct communication with Europe. The centre
of infection might be made to become an inexhaustible
source of wealth, whereas it is at present
an implacable instrument of death. The
tribute paid to King Cholera, siuce 1817,
amounts to forty-seven millions of corpses!
Admitting that a man's life is of the same
money-value as that of an ox, namely, some
twenty pounds, or thereabouts, the total loss
amounts to not much less than one hundred
millions of pounds.

As to prophylactic measures: melons, peaches,
and other especially-laxative fruits, should be
abstained from, as well as excessively cold or