tality of the people. Formerly, if one asked in Lyons why the city was so happily and so strikingly spared, he would not be referred to the unusual cleanliness and comfortable life of the common people, nor to-the splendid drinking-water, for, before filtered Rhone water was introduced in 1859, this was very bad, but to the air, whose circulation through the confluent valleys of the Rhône and the Saône was so lively that it was always master over the imported cholera poison, and would not let it develop. But if we compare the velocity of the wind as observed at the Lyons meteorological station with that of other places much afflicted with cholera, we shall not find the slightest difference in favor of Lyons. The plain of Languedoc, over which the mistral blows so often, unroofing houses, uprooting trees, and destroying ships in the very harbor of Marseilles, is not seldom visited by epidemic cholera. Later investigations show that nothing is left with which to explain the immunity of Lyons but the condition of its soil. Apart from the size of the city, this immunity is not more striking—it is, in fact, not so striking—than that, for example, of Versailles, where, notwithstanding a constant daily and hourly communication with Paris, cholera has never broken out in an epidemic form. Decaisne has shown that the condition of the soil only can be regarded as bearing upon the immunity of this place.
Analogous facts may be found wherever the spread of cholera or typhoid is earnestly investigated. The beautiful city of Salzburg, which is now so hospitably entertaining the Association of Naturalists and Physicians, belongs to the number of fortunate cities that have so far been spared cholera-epidemics, notwithstanding numerous refugees from cholera have collected here when the disease prevailed in Austria and Southern Bavaria; among whom cases have occurred without the infection passing over to the city. Only in the winter of 1873-'74, when a severe outbreak of cholera occurred in the prison establishment at Laufen, did weak signs appear in Salzburg, showing that at least certain quarters of the city were not absolutely and invariably protected against cholera. So Lyons was made aware once, in 1854, that the whole city was not insusceptible to it. The Lyonnese were not willing to acknowledge this, for they had boasted too much of their immunity; but they asked, What do a few hundred cases of cholera in fifty years amount to in comparison with the total population (400,000 souls) of the city? We should not treat the subject in this way, but should rather ask, How many inhabitants has the part of the city which, even if it was only once, had a considerable number of cases of cholera? and then the reply can not be evaded that the suburb of Guillotière suffered from a decided cholera-epidemic in 1854. This once-occurring epidemic was associated with an equally rare abnormal drought and a long-continued low stage of water in the Rhône, such as had not been observed since 1826. So Salzburg might at some time be visited with cholera, at least here and there, if the sky should obstinately keep
