Possibly we may congratulate ourselves upon the departure of the
cholera more speedily than on its last great visitation. The last return of the Registrar-General marked a decline of 500 upon the statement of the previous week ; and it has subsequently been announced, apparently on official authority, that the disease un- derwent a still further and more remarkable decline during the Wednesday and Thursday. The state of the atmosphere would account for that improvement, since, independently of the lower temperature, there has been a great relief- from the damp which clogged the air and which seemed to forbid evaporation; the moisture clinging around the frame like a tangible mantle of disease. The total number of deaths during the present eruption has been 7669,—less by 4156 than the mortality within the same period in 1849. Since the mortality was higheat in that year on the same day of September, and since the decline com- menced in the corresponding week, . we have corroborative reasons to anticipate that we are now taking leave of the malady for the season. Thus far we may congratulate our- selves upon a favourable balance in respect of luck, and also, we may add, of attention to the disease. There is much reason to suppose that the mortality, this time,' has been checked by general precautions, by the more general obedience to the dictates of ordinary prudenoe, and not less by a comparative absence of the panics that attended the increase of mortality in 1849. In another respect the balance is still more in favour of the present time : the former opportunity for learning the precautions of the future out of a present calamity was almost entirely wasted ; this time the pressure has assisted in proeuring for no a decided un- provement of the Public Health Department, an investigation of the exciting causes, and altogether a more philosophical treatment of the subject. We may anticipate from the efforts made during the present season, much systematic precaution to guard us against a renewal of the epidemic ; and, what will be still more valuable, a systematic exertion to relieve our town population from the standing causes of endemic disease.
