296 NATURE AND LIFE. 



complications and difficulties which make it in many in- 

 stances inefficient and impracticable. Not only is it difficult 

 to find sufficiently vigilant officials, but it is often impossi- 

 ble to block the transfers and the movements of travelers 

 which are agents in spreading the epidemic. 



. III. 



If it is out of the question to destroy the cholera at its 

 source, if it is very difficult to prevent its making its way to 

 us, does not science at least possess an antidote to meet it 

 with, a remedy to fight with against it when it has succeed- 

 ed in making a lodgment among us ? Just as in speaking 

 of the nature of the evil the physician must own the almost 

 entire uncertainty of knowledge, so, in view of the victims 

 of the cholera's attacks, he must confess the impotence of 

 art, almost always beyond remedy. The prescriptions sug- 

 gested for the cure of cholera are as numerous as the sup- 

 positions framed for its explanation. On either hand the 

 illusion is the same. Those who regard the cholera as a 

 disease caused by parasites, 1 naturally look for the methods 

 of destroying these parasites. Doctors who look on it as 

 an affection by virus, occasioning a kind of molecular 

 change in the whole mass of the humors, and especially of 

 the albuminoid matters, are persuaded that acids might be 

 of healing effect in these cases. Others, supposing that 

 the most important point of all is to restore the liquidity 

 of blood coagulated in the veins, resort to alkalies. Salts 

 of copper have also been employed, regarded by some phy- 

 sicians as genuine specifics, as also alkaloids, such as caf- 

 eine, etc. Those physiologists who fix the seat of the dis- 

 ease in the nervous structure of the great sympathetic are 



1 Among the supporters of this notion must be cited a German doctor, 

 Hallier, who thinks it is proved that the cholera is caused by micrococ- 

 cus. And Hallier explains all diseases by micrococcus, or by infinitely 

 little beings of the same order. 



