It is needless to remark to those who know the Chinese, that there are no sanitary precautions of any sort whatever taken against cholera. Everything that science forbids is done freely, fully, and continuously. There is the utmost carelessness in regard to the deadly discharges from the patient's body; no isolation is anywhere possible; there is the most. positive and continuous contamination of the water in the wells (which contain only surface water generally communicating with a filthy mud-hole); there is the most unrestrained personal contact with the sick while living, and with the corpse after death; the latter is kept for days before being encofined, until the odour is frightful; the coffin is frequently thin and unsealed; not an article belonging to or used by the patient is ever destroyed, but all are at once used as before by the living; and there is nowhere any fumigation of infected objects or dwellings. The Chinese hear that Westerners believe cholera to be caused by "small worms" (wei chung) which move about freely; the very same notion, it might be remarked, which the Chinese have always held in regard to toothache, albeit the theory is ridiculed by foreigners.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.