An Address on Cholera Enquiry

Even in regard to the simple question, whether the discharges from cholera patients, mixed with drinking water, are capable of communicating cholera to human beings using such water, there is the greatest diversity of opinion. The careful researches of Snow, more than 30 years ago, one would have thought, would have settled this question for ever, but it is not so. Macnamara's test case, in which cholera discharges were accident.ly mixed with drinking water of some prisoners, of whom a proportion subsequently sickened and died of cholera, has been explained away as no evidence at all, and his conclusions from the facts have been controverted by the highest sanitary authority in India. It would be of course easy enough to test and settle this question once and for ever, if volunteers could be found willing, f?r the sake of scientific truth, philanthrophy, or other reasons, to submit themselves to a series of experiments, under the observation of a committee of scientific experts. If some of the nonbelievers in the coutagiousness of cholera could be persuaded to show the reality of their belief, by offering themselves as subjects of experiment, they would testify to the courage of their convictions,butthisisscarcely to be desired, or expected. A small volume has recently been published by Dr. J. M. Cuningham, late Sanitary Com-