e constantly enforced by the Central Board of Health (as
it is called), which is established at the Council Office, and
labours very assiduously in the cause. Undoubtedly a great deal
of good will be done in the way of purification. As to the
disorder, if it had not the name of cholera nobody would be
alarmed, for many an epidemic has prevailed at different times
far more fatal than this. On Friday last we despatched Dr. Barry
down to Sunderland with very ample powers, and to procure
information, which it is very difficult to get. Nothing can be
more disgraceful than the state of that town, exhibiting a
lamentable proof of the practical inutility of that diffusion of
knowledge and education which we boast of, and which we fancy
renders us so morally and intellectually superior to the rest of
the world. When Dr. Russell was in Russia, he was disgusted with
the violence and prejudices he found there on the part of both
medical men and the people, and he says he finds just as much
here. The conduct of the people of Sunderland on this occasion is
more suitable to the barbarism of the interior of Africa than to
a town in a civilised country. The medical men and the higher
classes are split into parties, quarrelling about the nature of
the disease, and perverting and concealing facts which militate
against their respective theories. The people are taught to
believe that there is really no cholera at all, and that those
who say so intend to plunder and murder them. The consequence is
prodigious irritation and excitement, an invincible repugnance on
the part of the lower orders to avail themselves of any of the
preparations which are made for curing them, and a proneness to
believe any reports, however monstrous and exaggerated. In a very
curious letter which was received yesterday from Dr. Daur, he
says (after complaining of the medical men, who would send him no
returns of the cases of sickness) it was believed that bodies had
been dissected before the life was out of them, and one woman,
was said to have been cut up while she was begging to be spared.
The consequence of this is that we have put forward a strong
order to compel medical men to give information, and another for
the compulsory removal of nuisances. It is, however, rather
amusing that everybody who has got in their vicinity anything
disagreeable, or that they would like to be rid of, thinks that
now is their time, and the table of the Board of Health is
covered