Extract

For several reasons the present season is a convenient ono for considering the subject of cholera in the city, the effect upon its production of sanitary work already done, and the prospect of further advantage. We have lately passed through the annual period of chief cholera prevalence, and the events of this particular season have brought the subject prominently to notice. The outbreak at Goa Bagan, the several minor outbreaks which followed it, and a large number of scattered cases in the town make together a total which demands that, without further delay, there should be collected and examined all the evidence that is accessible of the local relations of the disease and of its growth or decline. Time has not admitted of my preparing a complete history of tlio local distribution of the disease, or of ascertaining how far the sectional registers may serve to indicate a general law of local association In past years; but the enquiry which has been made under the prompting of current events has suggested practical conclusions which, if sound, are of so much importance as to compose an additional cogent reason for giving them due representation at once, instead of reserving them for report at the end of the year. And this should the more decidedly be done since it must be admitted, as among the proceeds of the enquiry, that the annual production of cholera in Calcutta is steadily increasing, and that this production may be materially influenced by means which are at the