Excerpt from Second Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire Whether Any and What Special Means May Be Requisite for the Improvement of the Health of the Metropolis: With Minutes of Evidence WE arrested Our inquiries, to submit early the first clear practical conclusions which they presented for executive action, namely, the conclusions at which we had arrived in relation to the identity of the tracks of cholera and typhus, and to measures preven tive of both, and the conclusions in relation to the state and pro gress of expensive and inefficient works under the direction of the several district Commissions of Sewers, and the necessity of their immediate re-organization. When we submitted these conclusions in our First Report, we had received only a small proportion of the returns in answer to the inquiries we made of the medical officers of the Poor-law Unions in the Metropolis. Since that time we have examined these, returns, and have ascertained the present-condition of the localities, and the nature and extent of the diseases now prevailing, particularly in the several districts which suffered most severely from cholera during its former visitation. We have resumed the consideration of the special subject of the Asiatic cholera, because it has continued steadily to advance in Europe, and because the available measures of prevention are in principle the same as those which are most efficient against typhus and diarrhoea, the epi demies by which the population of the depressed districts has been lately, and we regret to' state continues to be, most severely ravaged. The whole tbnor of the evidence which has come before us shows, that epidemic cholera is to be regarded, in its essential circumstances, as an exemplar of epidemic disease in general, indicating only in a more striking and appalling manner a state of things which is always to be met with, more especially in the depressed districts namely, the presence of some common and fatal epidemic, called common from the very circumstance that it is sel dom if ever absent, together with a morbid susceptibility, to the causes of any general and extraordinary epidemic that may arise. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.