Postscript: Farrell on Snow

Southwark and Vauxhall Company, only 14 in that of the Lambeth Company's houses, and the remainder in houses that got their water from pump wells or direct from the river. Remember, this was in districts where houses standing next to each other very often had a different water supply.'' ''Pure reason!'' ejaculated the Magistrate. ''It will be too much for them. Ha! Ha!'' If anything was destined to distract the assembly from an objective consideration of rival arguments it was this strange, almost mad, outburst from the Magistrate. Dr McNab continued , however: ''During the epidemic as a whole which lasted ten weeks there were 2443 deaths in houses supplied by Southwark and Vauxhall as against 313 in those supplied by the Lambeth Company. Admittedly the former supplied twice as many houses as the latter. .. but if the fatal cases of cholera during the entire epidemic are taken in proportion to the houses supplied, it will be seen that there were 610 deaths out of 10 000 houses supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Company, whereas there were only 119 out of 10 000 supplied by the Lambeth Company. I challenge Dr Dunstaple to deny in the face of this evidence that cholera is not spread by drinking water!'' The effect of Dr McNab's arguments was by no means as overwhelming as might be supposed; with the best will in the world and in ideal circumstances it is next to impossible to escape cerebral indigestion as someone quotes comparative figures as fluently as Dr McNab had just been doing. The audience, their minds gone blank, stared craftily at Dr McNab wondering whether this was a conjuring trick in which he took advantage of their stupidity. Very likely it was. The audience, too, was painfully hungry and yet in the presence of food which was not apparently destined for their stomachs; this made them feel weak and peevish. The heat, too, was atrocious; the air in the hall was stagnant and the audience stinking. Every time you took a breath of that foul air you could not help imagining the cholera poison gnawing at your lungs. Even Fleury, who was perfectly conscious of the force of McNab's arguments, nevertheless gave a visceral assent to those of Dr Dunstaple. What would have happened if Dr Dunstaple had replied to Dr McNab's challenge it is hard to say. He had taken a …