THE CHOLERA IN EUROPE.

Inangahua Times, Volume X, Issue 1610, 7 October 1885, Page 2

THE CHOLERA IN EUROPE.

• The ravages made by the cholera in Spain have, says the •* European Mail," now attained proportions which may justly be regarded as stupendous. The latest accounts to band state that the people are fleeiig from the infected districts, earning with them th* 1 clothing of members of the family who have been victims of the epidemic ; and where this linen is washed i.» towns hitherto free of the disease, the cholera claims fresh victims. Tlie e.odus iut,o France is proceeding very extensively. According to tb-" statistics which have been furnished, the numbers who have perished have amounted to upwards of 50,000, but il is very doubtful whether even this estimate measures tbe actual raorta lity. In Spain there is a poll-tax whic_i operates to present a complete return of the population being made, and irrespective of this, the returns of Iho-t who actually succumb to the epidemic are never even approximately accurate, But even if we take the numbers ol the victims as correct, the effects oi the plague are far iv excess of anythiuj with which even in the statistics oi of this dread visitation we have li-eer made acquainted iv any country i i Europe since the first appearance oi the cholera half a cetitnrv ago. Not are its ravages confined to tho_f classes which are, for nia-iy reasons, supposed to l»e the most exposed tr the operation of tlie epidemic. So-ne time since the Governor of a provinc. succumbed, and only the other da. the Archbishop of Seville wa3 numbered among the vi«* tint .. The epidemic has crossed the Pyrenees, anc the daily returns of deaths at Marseil lr. are steadily increasing. It ha* hitherto been one of the cnrioui ch.-'...cteristics of this terrible maladj that it does not, except at very con sidei-able intervals, repeat its course aud tlie fact that Marseilles was visitec a twelvemouth since raised a certain presumption that it would have enjoy ed immunity during the presut year Two years ago Egypt was visited bj the cholera, and the mortality ai Alexandria, Damietta, Cairo, anc other places in Lower Egypt was con siderable, but since then there has been no reappearance there of th( death-dealing epidemic. It was, there fore, in a*cordance with precedent, assumed that the disease bad exhausted itself during the past year in Southern Europe, and, as no further progres? was made by it towards the North, that years won'd elapse before there would be a reappearance of the visit ation. Tiiese anticipations, have unfortunately, proved to be unfounded and we are now in presence of a peril which has assumed far greater propor tions than when, in 1883, in Egypt it threatened Europe. It is not only nearer to our shores, but it has assumed a virulence almost, if not entirely, unexampled since its first appearance in Western Europe.