Cholera in Europe.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 70, 4 October 1884, Page 6

Cholera in Europe.

Recent telegraphic intelligence published shows that the cholera plague is not by any means "stamped out" in the South of Europe. In one day lately no fewer than seventy deaths occurred at Cenoa, and fifty at Naples-, ■« hile a fiesh outbreak of the disease i^ leported to have taken place at Toulon. In these circumstances it is not reasoning to learn that Australian mail steamers have resumed calling at Naples : for if anything i^ well established it is that cholera germs are capable of being carried immense distances and of causing an outbieak of the dread disease whenever a fitting habitat is found. Naples has the unsavoury reputation of being the iilthiest city in the world, and to that is due the \imlence and persistence of the choleia there. Genoa, Toulon, and Marseille^ are all deficient in sanitary arrangements ; but it was noticeable in the French cities that the cholera was most pievalent and fatal in the Italian quaiters. The connection of dirt with cholera is thus equally well-established, and the disease is proved to be one of those dire scourges by which Nature punishes the infraction of her laws. Florence Nightingale, who has had a large experience of cholera in India, maintains that it is not communicable trom one person to another, but i* an epidemic disease caused by the pollution of earth, air, water, and buildings. She, perhaps, goes too far in asserting that quarantines and cordons can do nothing to stop the spread of the malady ; but there can be no doubt of the efficacy of the preventive method which that distinguished lady advocates — viz., strict attention to cleanliness and drainage, Ifc is too much to expect that even the terrible lesson of the present visitation will lead to a thorough reform in the sanitary arrangements of old world towns ; but in new lands, where cities are just being laid out, there should be no difficulty in preventing the creation of insanitary conditions. Still the obrious duty is too apt to be neglected ; and just as cholera found its congenial dirt in the cities of the United States and carried off its tens of thousands of victims, so there are " slums " in Melbourne and Sydney in which, if cholera were once introduced, frightful mortality would be caused. While all panic on the subject of cholera is to be deprecated, it Avould bo well if a wholesome dread of its introduction would actuate the people of these colonies, so that the dire possibility of a destructive epidemic might be averted.

Frank Sieele, a stockman at Makatahi, in Westland district, is missing, and it is feared he has been killed, as his horse and dogs have returned without him. From Hokitika " abominable " weather is reported. It has been raining there for weeks, and shipping business is suspended because of floods.