Abstract
PARIS Academy of Sciences, September 21.—M. Bouley, President, in the chair.—On the development of cholera in India, by M. Gustave Le Bon. In support of Prof. Peter's view that European differs from Asiatic cholera only in the greater intensity of the causes producing it, the author argues that both forms might break out spontaneously in any country through the volatile germs arising from putrified organic matter. In his former researches he snowed that, apart from these germs, there exists a series of volatile alkaloids which, when introduced by respiration, produce almost fulminating effects. These researches throw much light on the accidents attending the exhumation of bodies long buried and on the spread of typhoid or analogous fevers. The facts recently observed by M. Le Bon during a sudden outbreak of cholera at Kombakonum, in the south of India, tend to confirm this hypothesis. In India itself cholera rages almost exclusively amongst the native populations; the English, who reside in large cantonments, where sanitary arrangements are scrupulously attended to, being seldom attacked. That cholera and intermittent fevers are propagated chiefly by bad water is a point on which opinion is unanimous in that country, and the author's personal experience places it beyond all reason able doubt.—Elements of Brooks's comet, by M. R. Radau. These elements, according to observations made at Cambridge and Paris, are found to be:—
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Societies and Academies . Nature 32, 543–544 (1885). https://doi.org/10.1038/032543c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/032543c0