Asiatic cholera : history up to July 15, 1892, causes and treatment / by N.C. Macnamara.

  • Macnamara, Nottidge Charles, 1832-1918.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Asiatic cholera : history up to July 15, 1892, causes and treatment / by N.C. Macnamara. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    disease. We may, however, turn to the other side of tlie picture, and refer to tlie remarkable results following the supply to a body of men living in the endemic area of cholera of pure drinking water. From the year 1826 until 1864, our European soldiers in Fort William, Calcutta, w^ere, year after year, sub- ject to cholera; in some seasons, as in 1857, out of a strength of 700 men, no less than 73 died from Asiatic cholera. The average mortality, however, for the above period from this disease was 20 per 1,000. From the year 1863 up to the present time the death rate per 1,000 of our troops in Fort William from cholera has fallen from 20 per 1,000 to 1 per 1,000. In the year 1863 the fort was, for the first time since it Y/as built, supplied with pure drinking water, with the result referred to. In the same way the death-rate from cholera among the inhabitants of Calcutta has decreased in a marked manner since the year 1870, when a pure supply of water was provided for the town. The decrease in the death-rate from this disease among the inhabitants of Calcutta has not been so marked as that which has taken place in Fort AVilliam, because, in many parts of the city, the municipal water supply is im- perfect, and people still consume contaminated tank and well water. However pure the drinking w^ater consumed by the inhabit- ants of Calcutta may be, it is certain that milk, which forms so large an element of the diet of natives, is very apt to be con- taminated with cholera excreta by being mixed with impure water. I gave the particulars of a case of this kind which occurred under my own observation, p. 25, and Dr. Simpson, the present able Officer of Health in Calcutta, has supplied the details of similar localized outbreaks of the disease, caused by ])ersons drinking milk which, there was good reason to believe, had been adulterated with contaminated water. It is possible that the germs of cholera may pass into the circulation by other paths than through the stomach, but we have no reliable evidence on this subject. From the details of numerous cases, to some of which I have referred, pp. 9,13, it is more tlian probable that the disease may be communicated through articles of clothing which have been contaminated by the evacuata of persons suffering from it. In like manner the bodies of individuals who have died of cholera may become a source of infection. Tiie attendants upon cholera patients are, as a rule, safe from fear of contracting the disease during their care of the sick. It is only under peculiar conditions, such as those to which I have referred as existing at Mian-Mir in 1861, p. 20, that attendants on persons suffering from cholera contract the