5. The discharges swarm with infective bacteria of various kinds, some of which, especially Koch's comma bacilli, seem to be specific.
6. The disease has been reproduced in men and some few animals by their swallowing the discharges.
7. The discharges, according to the experiments of Thiersch, Burdon-Sanderson, and Macnamara, are not virulent and poisonous for the first twenty-four hours; on the second day eleven per cent. of those who swallow them will suffer; on the third day, thirty-six per cent.; on the fourth day, ninety per cent.; on the fifth day, seventy-one per cent.; on the sixth day, forty per cent.; and after that the discharges have no effect—the bacteria die, and the poison becomes inert.
Professor Robin reproduced cholera in dogs, and the celebrated dog Juno died of cholera in Egypt last year. Professor Botkin, of the University of Dorpat, reproduced cholera in dogs by the subcutaneous injection of the urine of cholera patients. Even if the comma bacilli are not found in the urine, other bacteria are; and even Koch supposes that they secrete a virulent poison similar to that of some insects, which may be absorbed into the blood and escape from the kidneys.
8. Some of the manners and customs of the Hindoos are very peculiar. They always defecate upon the open ground, and will not use privies or latrines This is a matter of religious obligation with them. It is also obligatory upon them to go to stool every morning; to use the left hand only in wiping themselves; to wash their fundaments after stool; to wash their whole persons and clothing every day; and, finally, also to rinse their mouths with water, and this they often do after washing in foul tanks, or still fouler pools of water. On steamships, where tubs of water were provided for washing their fundaments after defecation, Surgeon-General De Renzy saw many Hindoos rinse their mouth with the same water.
9. The population of Hindostan is nearly three hundred millions, and at least one hundred million pounds of fæcal matter is deposited on the open ground everyday, and has been for centuries.
10. Much of this foul matter is washed by rains into their tanks and pools of water, which they use indiscriminately for washing, cooking, and drinking purposes.
11. The poison of cholera has repeatedly been carried in soiled clothing packed in trunks and boxes, and conveyed to great distances.
12. Articles of food, even bread and cake, as well as apples, plums, and other fruit, handled by persons in the incipient stages of cholera, have been known to convey the disease.
13. The number of epidemics produced by cholera discharges getting into drinking water are almost innumerable, and those from contaminated milk are not few.