17 Macnamara, op. cit., p. 196.
18 Surg.-Major Cornish, Practitioner, xxiv. 215.
19 Practitioner, xxvi. 159.
In December, 1871, an outburst of cholera occurred which was confined to the inmates of three excellent houses in a fine block of buildings in Calcutta. There had been no cholera in that neighborhood for four years. Within forty-eight hours a majority of the lodgers were sick, and on investigation it was found that the disease was carried in the drinking-water and in the milk diluted with it.20 The particular locality in which Dr. Koch made the discovery of the microscopic representative of cholera furnishes an example of the same nature: "At Saheb Ragau, a locality which has repeatedly been visited by cholera during the last hundred years, numerous cases of the disease were reported, and these, on inquiry, were found exclusively in the huts situated round a certain tank. Of the few hundred people who dwelt in these huts, as many as seventeen died of cholera, though the disease was not at that time prevalent in the neighborhood, or indeed in the whole police district of Calcutta. It was proved that, as usual in such cases, the dwellers around the tank used it for bathing, and drew thence their drinking-water; it was also elicited that the linen of the first fatal case, befouled with cholera dejections, had been washed in the tank."21 In June, 1873, a new hotel was opened at Vienna, and many of the guests became affected with diarrhoea that was attributed to the drinking-water, which was offensive to the taste and smell. After a fortnight a gentleman died of cholera in the hotel, and two days later several of the guests were attacked with the disease, of whom fourteen died. The gentleman who first died was believed to have brought the poison with him into the hotel, so that the drinking-water, which previously had been polluted with ordinary fecal discharges, became specifically affected through him.22 The discharges of one ill of cholera were thrown into, and the vessels used by him were washed near, a well from which all the residents of a farm-house drank. The wooden curbing of the well had rotted, and the ground immediately around had sunken; a heavy rain burst the curb, overflowed the well, and washed into it the entire surface-drainage of the surrounding ground. No attention was paid to this, and the water was used as before. It became so offensive that its use was forbidden, but too late to save the family, nine of whom died of cholera.23
20 U.S. Report, p. 85.
21 Times and Gaz., April, 1884, p. 527.
22 Times and Gaz., p. 86.
23 Ibid., p. 140.
At Farmington, Tenn., a man arrived who had contracted the cholera at Nashville; his illness ran its course at a point just forty paces from a well. Families that obtained their water from this well suffered in nearly all their members; where only certain members drank of it, they alone were affected.24 At Huntsville, Ala., during an epidemic of cholera, the city authorities forbade the use of well-water, and supplied pure water from another source, but only for one week. During this time no new cases of the disease occurred, and the negroes, thinking themselves secure, resumed the use of the well-water, and within four days six fatal cases of cholera occurred in the vicinity. The use of the well-water was again prohibited, and again the progress of the disease was arrested.25
24 Ibid., p. 172.