20

Scientific Memoirs by Medical Officers of the Army of India.

venting the possibility of such importation needs no demonstration. But if it
be allowed that epidemics can only arise under the co-operation of certain favour-
ing local conditions, a hopeful field for efforts at prevention is at once opened out,
and with the practical recommendation that the improvements in local sanitation
which they necessarily imply will not have been absolutely fruitless, even should
they not at once arrive at their special aim in reference to cholera. On every
occasion on which quarantine or similar measures attempting to prevent impor-
tation are enforced, and cholera, in spite of them, succeeds in establishing itself,
even the most ardent believers in the benefit of such procedures must allow that
a futile waste of effort and money has taken place, but any improvement in local
conditions must remain a benefit, even though its immediate purpose be not
achieved.

        CALCUTTA:

14th October, 1888.