Real Climate Records

The virulence of the plague which is ravaging North China puts into the far back ground anything of the kind which has occurred in Australian experience. From the meagre details to hand it unquestionably claims its victims, not by units or by twos and threes, but by hundreds and thousands, and death often occurs within three hours of the attack.

Medical skill seems helpless in the face of such a visitation. Even the vendors of serums recognise that here is something beyond their power to alter or alleviate.

The people themselves recognise the isolation camps as equivalent to sentence of death, and, resort to any subterfuge rather than surrender to the authorities. The disposal of the dead bodies, when deaths are so numerous, becomes a practical problem of great difficulty, and no better way of solving it has discovered than that of wholesale cremation carried on necessarily, in the roughest and most primitive manner.

The miseries of a people afflicted with so terrible a visitation call for the warmest sympathy, and as far as it can be compassed, of actual and practical assistance also. The form of the latter (when immediate requirements have been met) which would most commend itself, to the Western mind, would be the imparting of information, and the enforcement of sanitary and hygienic regulations, which should minimise the effects of future epidemics of a similar character.

But for this purpose the services of the most skillful physicians are needed; and they, in their turn must be supplied with the most complete and detailed information. It is the irony of events that just at the time when many of us were boasting of the triumph of science over disease, there should be an epidemic, which laughs all science to scorn.

It is as though there were all the refinements of civilisation in the upper stories of a magnificent palace, whilst the basement was blazing in an unquenchable conflagration. Information as to the progress of the malady is wanting as there are many left to cremate the bodies, to draw cordons around the places deemed to be specially dangerous as centres of infection, and to perform other functions, it appears that there are still a large number who, although exposed to the same danger as those who succumb, are as yet immune and susceptible.

What is it that causes the difference is the secret of health spiritual, mental, or physical; or does it partake of all three? No mention is made of famine in the reports. But it is well known that in the crowded populations of the East multitudes live habitually on the verge of starvation. The general upheaval and disturbance caused by the epidemic would make it more difficult to live than usual, and it will not, therefore, be surprising if we learn that depressed physical condition are in the fortunate position of being able to carry their prescriptions into effect will readily believe, on general principles; that the advice of  “Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merrimaan,” though, as we learn from the deaths of John Dowie and Mrs. Eddy, they, will not enable any one to live forever, are as yet the best prophylactic that we know of against disease, whether it take the epidemic or sporadic form.