156 On the Cholera Animalcule. 



It was said to be the cause of the^ pestilential blisters of the 

 Gulf of Bothnia. He gave it the vermiform shape, and the 

 yellow colour of northern tradition, and conferred on it the 

 scientific name, more ridiculous than formidable, of the Infernal 

 Fury {Furia infernalis). Before that, at the time of the plague 

 at Marseilles in 1721, the contagion had been ascribed to small 

 infusory-like winged or mitelike, yet invisible, animals ; and at 

 the time there appeared in the French language many treatises, 

 which must now appear absurd to every well-informed per- 

 son. One of these, printed anonymously in 1726, to push the 

 matter still farther, deduces all diseases from these animalcules, 

 which are designated by the following name : Vers assoupissans, 

 cours de ventristes, harhon quifians, douifians, erectj/s, JisUi- 

 laires lacrymaux^jieuistes blancs ! The tradition of the Lin- 

 nean Furia still remains in Finland, where the anthrax is com- 

 mon ; and, in Siberia, I found, in 1829? on my journey with 

 Baron von Humboldt, a similar tradition regarding the cause of 

 the Siberian pestilential boil, only that it was ascribed to flying 

 large insects, without, however, one of them ever having been 

 exactly characterised or even taken. Although we passed 

 through many places infested with the pest, and I neglected no 

 opportunity of learning the causes of the disease, I found no 

 trace of this insect. 



A similar tradition gave rise to the question which was put 

 to Dr Hemprich and myself, in the year 1823, by the Pacha of 

 Egypt, whether it was true that, in Dongala, there were flying 

 scorpions which produced mortal wounds, for the troops refused 

 to march there, having already suffered much from those with- 

 out wings. As during my natural history researches for nine 

 months in Dongola, I had found nothing which justified this 

 belief, except the troublesome small mosquitoes, which were 

 neither poisonous, nor scorpions, the mind of the Pacha was set 

 at ease. 



As was to be expected, the same idea of invisible poisonous 

 insects was transferred to the contagion of cholera ; yet it is 

 hardly credible that Hahnemann, as stated in the Leipzic Jour- 

 nal, should have for this reason recommended the sedative ef- 

 fects of camphor, because it killed these insects, and so ex- 

 pelled the cholera. 



