The latest reports on the cholera epidemic show that it
is abating everywhere, the new cases in Hamburg having been only seventy on Wednesday, in St. Petersburg only thirty- five, and in Paris only twenty-six. In the latter city, however, it is reported that the cases are most unusually severe ; and the washing of soiled linen is pointed to as a dan- gerous source of infection. Dr. Daremberg, in the Dgbats, argues, however, that the march of the disease can have nothing to do with water, inasmuch as the cholera, though it descended the Seine, ascended the Volga. That sounds epigrammatic, but is not the conclusion rather a broad one ? Why should not the cholera have ascended the Volga in steamers, just as it crossed the Black Sea ? Water cannot go uphill, but a cholera patient can, and it is the patient who infects the water. The exemption of Great Britain is still noteworthy, and points to a sanitary condition better than the external dirt of our slums allows the observer to believe. It is the purity of the drinking water which protects us.
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