Prevention of cholera : being the substance of a letter to the Chairman of the Board of Guardians of the Sheffield Union / by J.C. Hall.

  • Hall, John Charles, 1816-1876.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prevention of cholera : being the substance of a letter to the Chairman of the Board of Guardians of the Sheffield Union / by J.C. Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    and medicines, on the first attack of diarrhoea. To remain in our present condition until Cholera attack us would be almost criminal: we may yet have time to prevent much of the mortality that attends it; for we are at length fully aware that Cholera will not prevail as an epidemic—will not decimate a population— will not break out at one hundred parts of the same town unless the local sources of atmospheric pollution and bodily disorders exist to abundantly supply the pabulum requisite to its existence, and although so long as these depressing agents continue, the pes- tilence will remain, the removal of them removes also the predispo- sition to pestilence. Bear in mind that our means for self preservation, and the preservation of others, are two-fold. Firstly, the removal of all those local influences which favour the existence of diseases, and the prevention of their recurrence ; and this must he done by generally improving, in every town, the condition of the districts known to be unfavourable to health. Where Cholera has once been, unless causes favourable to its localization have been taken away, there it will come again, so surely as, summer after sum- mer, the swallow returns to the old nest which it has occupied before. The home of the Cholera, too, is the abode, year after year, of Measles, Scarlet Fever, and Typhus-Fever of the most malignant kind : by cleansing, and keeping cleansed such places, we certainly render them less liable to be visited by Cholera, and, even should it not attack severely the inhabitants of a town (as most probably it will not,) where these precautions have been taken, let no one venture to decry these active measures, or sneer- ingly insinuate they could not have been required ; for we shall, by rooting out every nuisance, have rendered such courts and lanes less liable to yearly visitations of fever. And if we look at the question of sanitary improvement, even in a pounds, shillings, and pence light, much pecuniary benefit will be seen to arise ; for, many additional demands are made on the rate-payers for the support of the widows and orphans of those who have died from Typhus-fever; for, after all, the Fever Tax is not the least of the heavy annual demands on the poor rates of this country.* It must at length be admitted, to be perfectly true, as pointed out by “ The Lancet,” that the word “ Asiatic ” can no longer be pre-fixed to the disease known as Cholera. Cholera first attacked the inhabitants of this country in 1832 ; again visited us after an interval of about fifteen years, in 1848 ; in 1853 it has again ap- peared, attended, especially at Newcastle, by a mortality perfectly * A few years ago, the result of a careful calculation showed in the different Unions, 27,000 cases of Widowhood, and 100,000 cases of Orphan- age, the result of causes capable of prevention.