of proper remedies, might have ensured them the salvation of at least
their temporal life.

To go still higher. Although Munich had warning of the approach of the
epidemic months before it broke out, no sufficient means were adopted
by the authorities to fortify the city against its attack. All summer
long the street-drains sent up their concentrated stenches and the
undrained streets spread far and wide their promiscuous abominations.
The general daily disinfection ordered by the city government was
never thoroughly enforcedly the police, and as often as a lull
occurred in the virulence of the pestilence it was almost totally
neglected by the citizens. When the plague ceased for a few days in
the autumn, the chief medical authorities announced that it was at an
end; and when it broke out again, these wise ones comforted the public
by assuring them that it was only a "_Nach-epidemie_"--an _after
epidemic_--that is, a final effort of the mysterious poison, like the
last flashing up of an expiring flame. And yet this "after epidemic"
lasted more than five months, and was more virulent in its workings
than had been the three months' visitation in the previous summer! The
official reports and scientific discussions of the subject were
unsatisfactory to the last degree. The principal object seemed to be,
not to cleanse Munich and get rid of the pestilence, but to
substantiate the proposition that the variations in the sanitary
condition of the city are intimately connected with the rising and
falling of the ground-water _(grund-wasser)_--a theory which, whether
true or not, is of small practical value under existing circumstances,
since the ground-water, so far as quality is concerned, is entirely
beyond human control, while the drinking-water and the sewers are
capable of improvement.

It is but justice to say that a few physicians--who, having recently
come to Munich, are properly impressed with its sanitary deficiencies,
and one, at least, who, long a resident, has a thorough knowledge of
what is wanted, and sufficient common sense and courage to speak
out--do not hesitate to declare that the bad water and bad drainage of
that city are the principal causes of its everlasting typhus and its
frequent epidemics. But these men are in bad odor with their
colleagues, and are denounced on all sides as enemies of the fair fame
and prosperity of Munich. Certain physicians of high standing there
laugh at the fuss made about the w