ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 153, 4 December 1914, Page 2

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR.

RAVAGES OF CHOLERA. Cholera is reported 'to have been taking its toll in the Austrian ranks._ This is no new disease in Europe. There is little doubt that there have been visitations of it for at least four centuries in Knfflund, though it was not known by that name. The cause of cholera is the poisoning from the organism known as the "comma bacillus," or "Koch's vibrio.'-' This is present in the secretions, especially in the faces, and in the bedding,. clothes, and everything that has come in contact with the patient. Hence the need for the greatest care ' in disinfecting during the illness and after the case is finished. Occasionally the poison is carried in the water supply, and one of the worst outbreaks 1 in the United Kingdom occurred in this way. In the middle of last century the 1 water supply of London was incredibly 1 bad, and although the "New River" : brought in a considerable supply, mucn use was made of local springs .and wells. In a street in Soho there was a pump that had such a reputation for produc- ' iug good water, that persons living as | far off as Ilampstead were accustomed • to fetch- it from there. When cholera ' reached England, this puinp, in which no ' doubt many a cesspool drained', became 1 contaminated, but the inhabitants, not ' recognising that cholera spread by r drinking it, used it as usual) and died [ by the hundred. In the 1892 epidemic, Russia's mortality was nearly 4G per 1 cent., Germany 51, and Austria as much 1 as 57 per cent out of the thousands of sufferers. The city o£ Hamburg in those ' years was a terrible example of what cholera can do in a city dependent upon a fouled-water supply. The water for all purposes was pumped from the tidal river into the mouth of which the city sewers emptied themselves. The tide washed the drainage back into the water supply pipes to such an extent that the inhabitants said the water looked like broth. Into this prepared culture-bed came cholera. Thy disease was not. recognised at once, nor checked as it might possibly have been, and within eleven I ilays after the first suspicious case occurred, people were dying in Hamburg at the rate of 1(100 a day. At the same time the town of Altona, just across the river from Hamburg, suffered very slightly, for though water from the xame river waa used, it was filtered through a bed of sand.