The Local Government Board reports that no case of cholera
now exists in England, which, as persons affected have been brought here, and isolated cases have been reported here and there, is most satisfactory. The importation of Russian Jews has been stopped for the time ; and, indeed, owing to the American prohibition, and the alarm among the owners of passenger-ships, emigration may be said to be suspended everywhere. On the Continent, however, the disease still rages. In Russia, 4,694 cases, and 2,540 deaths, were officially reported on the 5th inst., and the true number was certainly in excess of that figure. In Paris, on September 7th, there were 47 new cases, and 30 deaths ; and in Hamburg, on the same day, 605 cases, and 315 deaths. The accounts from Hamburg are most distressing. All communication with the rest of Ger- many has been suspended, great numbers of the rich have fled, ordinary trade is disorganised, and it is reported that ten thousand persons have no means of subsistence. The report of independent doctors and nurses is that the hospitals have broken down under the strain, that the crowding is frightful, often including patients free from the disease, and that it is hardly possible to remove the dead. Hamburg, it seems clear, needs a despotic Health Commissioner, the Senate having neglected all precautions, and then, when the disease arrived, stirred every cesspool. No one dependent on the goodwill of townsfolk is of use as a sanitary authority. He knows too well that to attack drains is to attack their owners.
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