Cholera Clouds.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7073, 20 February 1893, Page 1

Cholera Clouds.

{Times of India.) Some of our readers may remember that, shortly after the outbreak of cholera on board H.M. ships Marathon and Redbreast in Bombay Harbour in September of last year, an ingenious correspondent of this journal put forward some suggestion to account for the outbreak. A dark cloud, it was noticed, had passed over both vessels very shortly before the first batch were stricken down, and in some mysterious way the cloud was connected with the cholera. The suggestions led to a number of other instances of the “ cholera cloud ” having preceded an outbreak—once on board two p. and O. steamers in Bombay Harbour, twenty-five years before; once thirty five years ago on a barque at Kurraohee; and again, forty years before at Ludhiana, where the' 60th Regiment was severely affiicted. In all these instances it was said a “ dark cloud ” had heralded the dreaded disease, and a theory grew up that cholera germs were contained id the moisture with which the cloud was laden. It was held in confirmation of this theory that in two tolerably well authenticated. cases, where the cloud had broken over the forecastle, and the remainder of the deck had remained dry, only the men quartered aft had been attacked, the officers and all those forward in each instance escaping unscathed. It is curious to note that all this “ cholera cloud ” theory has been adopted in effect by a wellknow American scientist, Professor A. 0. Abbot, whose researches into the nature of certain bacteria found in the interior of iarge hailstones are noted in the last number of the Scientific American to hand in this country. Professor Abbot found that the organisms ranged in number from four hundred to seven hundred to the cubic centimetre. Thev were apparently of a single species—the' short, thin oval bacillus so commonly found in cases of sporadic disease, where the source of infection is impossible to trace. Dr Abbott’s theory is that the bacilli are gathered up by a storm or cyclone, carried into humid air and imprisoned by the moisture; to be subsequently in colder regions frozen into the hailstone in which they have been found, or to be carried to the earth in warmer regions in a shower of rain, or even under conditions in a eloud of dust. The theory is a remarkable one, but by no means undeserving of attention. This is not, of course, the first time it has been formulated, but Professor Abbott s researches put it for the first time, we believe, in definite scientific form.