MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD.
EPIDEMICS AND ALCOHOL.
If, O reader, you have known what it is to pass years in a far-away land, of which the climate and the products are very different from those familiar to us here, you probably are acquainted also with the agreeable feeling produced by recognising some day, here on British soil, a plant, an animal, or a fruit, which you had thought to be kept pretty strictly to the climes where you had once been straying. You are pleased at sight of a once familiar object now for long out of reach and sight, and you are pleased to think that the object is one of which you have intimate knowledge, while most of your friends, probably, require much explanation as to its nature and uses. A pleasure of this kind may greet you on any day. There is scarcely anything, from anywhere, which may not find its way into London now. Time was when men went to certain places to obtain certain things : Quin went to Plymouth to eat John-dories; canvas-backed ducks could only be tasted by crossing the Atlantic; in Jamaica only could the perfect land-crab be enjoyed. But sit still now, have a little patience, and all these things yea, – even the incomparable land-crab – will come to you.
To-day I have had on my table some fairly good mangoes. Until to-day I had not eaten one for more years than I like to talk about; but I have talked a good deal about the fruit, declared it to be a specimen very inferior to some of which I once lived in the daily enjoyment, but nevertheless commended it to attention, and predicted that we should have it of superior quality anon. I think I was justified in this prediction by observation of the ever-increasing quantity and variety of foreign fruits which arrive at our markets. To say nothing more of fruits that are at present rare, those which we have long appreciated now come from a distance at a reduced price, so that there can be very general enjoyment of them. Pine-apples and grapes, which used to be supplied to us from English hothouses at very high prices, can now be enjoyed by the multitude; and, these being very wholesome as well as very grateful fruits, the indulgence to our palates is obtained without the sacrifice of any sanitary principle. Obtained, that is to say, in ordinary seasons without any sacrifice; but I fear that, if the cholera had come within a measurable distance of us last summer, the good supply of fruit would have been held to be a misfortune. I rather think it is usual for European doctors to altogether prohibit the consumption of fruit during a visitation; and we shall have rather a tantalising time whenever the fell disease may again make its way to our shores.
I am thankful to say that my experience of cholera-times is not very extensive. No doubt, when the dreadful disease is actually among an English community, they will be as much scared and horrified as denizens of any other country; but I do not think the apprehension of its appearance creates even proper alarm and caution. As a proof of this, I shall mention a commotion which I know to have occurred some years ago in a small
