The Philosopher's Mite to the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Date:
[1851?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Philosopher's Mite to the Great Exhibition of 1851. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/36 (page 19)
    broken out, and the same contingency is here still more probable. Clearly the same contingencies might occur, independently of such Exhibition ? Yes ; they have occurred. Every great port this year has had iso¬ lated cases ; and in several foreign ports, at the moment at which we now write, cholera is raging. Now, with regard to the occasional instances, such as have occurred during the past summer, they are controllable, being nothing but like petty bursts of flame after a general conflagration. But, to carry on the simile, although the language of metaphor is ill-adapted to science, feed any flame, however small, with successiohal additions of suitable materials for combustion, and vour conflagration will revive. Whenever the like J o incidents occur in the heart of a great town, under the favouring circumstance of a suddenly and largely increased population, it will create all the difference we see between a spark falling upon a rug, or light¬ ing upon a barrel of gunpowder. The boasted dis¬ covery of the slow progress and forewarnings proffered by cholera, apply only to any ordinary condition of population; in the extraordinary condition of a sudden duplication of its numbers, slow developement is at variance with all the records of history. The forthcoming Exhibition will furnish that ma¬ terial, and the over-crowded vessels which will convey your visitors are equally well calculated to be the pro¬ logue to the tragedy. A Government truly paternal is as much bound as any hospitable citizen to provide accommodation and safe residence for all guests, however numerous, if it chooses to invite them.