The Government has officially acknowledged the existence of cholera in
Spain. It was stated in the beginning of the week that the outburst in Valencia was declining ; but it is now known that it has not disappeared, and that of 196 seizures, 113 proved fatal, a large average. Great internal precautions are taken in Spain, and the French Government is watching the fourteen passes as if for an invasion, all passengers being arrested, medically examined, and, if suspicious symptoms are found, placed in quarantine. Nevertheless, according to the latest reports, an epidemic resembling cholera has broken out at Aunty in Brittany, and other towns in Western France. The quaran- tine precautions are, of course, quite useless, and in the only precaution of much value, the supply of drinking-water from sources unfailingly pure, France is still far behind its own scientific standard. The disease, if it is cholera, is now very near England, and it may be worth while to recollect that the most useful of all precautions is to drink only water which has been boiled, and that no drug has ever been found greatly useful, except opium.
