English Correspondence

[from our own correspondent.] London, September 18th, 1866. The cholera epidemic appears to be disappearing from London ; the last returns give 28 deaths per diem only. This result is probably in a great measure attributable to the prompt measures of house-to-house visitation and relief adopted by the various East-end parishes where the disease has been most fatal. Supplementary hospitals have been opened by private benevolence at Commercial Street and Limehouse. The notable feature during the present epidemic has been the adoption of the voluntary system of nursing by ladies and trained sisterhoods, who have given their services at the London Hospital and those above-mentioned with the most entirely satisfactory results. The columns of the daily press have been filled -with letters from medical practitioners upon the treatment of cholera and diarrhoea; it can, however, scarcely be contested that the columns of unscientific journals are not fit places for the discussion of important and improved theories. A series of reports on the epidemic of cholera in the East-end of London have appeared in the Lancet. The waiter comes to the conclusion that from the nature of the outbreak, and the close coincidence of its limits with those of the district supplied by one kind of drinking water, the late destructive explosion of cholera was due to the impurity of the water supplied by the East London Water Works. Some attention has been excited by Mr. Glaisher's asserted observation of a peculiar blue mist before and during the prevalence of cholera. Some persons have corroborated his statement, and offered various explanations; but nothing definite has yet been written on the subject. At a Council Meeting of the College of Surgeons, Sir William Fergnsson gave notice of his intention to bring forward a re-