ONE BY-PRODUCT of the three great cholera epidemics of nineteenth-century Britain was a huge literature of pamphlets, reports and monographs which described the effects on individual towns and districts.' In Oxford there were serious local outbreaks in 1832, 1849 and 1854. The disease spread along the Thames Valley from London and was brought into Oxford by the continual traffic of people and g...

T he lining of the small intestine locks out bacteria and toxins while soaking up nutrients and water. By observing intestinal cells of live mice through the microscope, Marchiando et al. (1) reveal the mechanism that regulates this barrier. The study shows the importance of the tight junction protein occludin for the process and identifi es the endocytic route that removes occludin to adjust p...