Doesn’t change the fact that he was an excellent theologian.

Based on the 1920 book on googlebooks, it seems to me that Talmage did focus on Oergel primarily.

Kind of transforms the story, though, doesn’t it? The man is actually a martyr to the cause rather than a man who didn’t have practical faith. He died trying to understand the plague, not because he drank the water.

Oergel

Many of you may remember, that the great city of Hamburg was once smitten with pestilence. The people were dying in such numbers that a regular system of collecting the dead was inaugurated. It was required that at any house in which there lay a corpse a red cloth should be hung out of the window, and the officers making their next rounds would call at that house and carry away the dead to be buried in the common field. A man of science, working in his laboratory, sought the cause of the deadly disease, and he found it. He discovered that by far the greater number of fatalities were limited to a certain district, and that district was supplied with water from the old water-works. The other part of the city obtained its supply of water from a new plant, and was not so sorely smitten, and in the few cases of death occurring in the more favored portion of the city, it was found that the victims had visited the other section and had drunk of the water there. He examined the water chemically, microscopically, and actually saw for himself, through the wonderful lens, the germs of cholera in the water, living organisms, that had caused the destruction of so many human lives. It was no matter of belief with him, it was a matter of actual knowledge, superior to mere belief. He proclaimed the fact that the water was the cause of the pestilence, and warned the people against drinking any but freshly boiled water, the boiling process being effective in destroying the death-dealing germs. Thousands within that city not only believed him, but had faith in him; they boiled the water used in their households, and escaped the pestilence. Others, who had not faith, whatever their state of belief may have been, drank and died. But, mark you, this tragic incident: Complete as was his knowledge, that knowledge of itself could not save him. On one occasion, either through forgetfulness or mistake, or through some other cause not known to us, he, the savior of so many, drank unboiled water, and his body was taken with the rest to the common grave.