Genre:

Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary

Subjects:

Religion, Disease, Bacteriology, Fear, Sanitation, Mining, Accidents, Physical Geography, Societies, Gender

    Reports the 'outbreak of cholera at Mecca' which was caused because the 'well Zem Zem, the sacred fountain' of Islam, from which every pilgrim to the holy city must drink as much as they can, is 'a seething mass of microbes and water'. Reflects that it is 'very sad that Moslems should thus make religion a great cholera propagator', although it is 'on the whole less contemptible than the conduct of that American congregation which, from its slavish dread of infection, has this year substituted for the communion cup which passed from lip to lip an arrangement by which each communicant is supplied with a separate wine-glass for his exclusive use'. (120) Also relates how the 'Royal Geographical Society made itself ridiculous last month by deciding that women should not be admitted to be Fellows on the same footing as men' (125).