GREAT EPIDEMICS ASIATIC CHOLERA. 299 



treat, if there be occasion, such forerunners of the pesti- 

 lence. 



We find that there is as yet no specific against cholera. 

 Can therapeutics indulge the hope of hereafter discovering 

 one ? We have no reason to doubt it. An heroic remedy 

 for intermittent fevers has been discovered, quinine, though 

 we have no knowledge whatever of the first cause of that 

 disease, nor the least notion of what the miasma of marshes 

 is. Perhaps in the same way we shall learn how to destroy 

 the miasma of cholera before penetrating its inner nature. 

 Meanwhile, it is allowable to rely on this, that the cholera, 

 subject in that respect to that mysterious law which gov- 

 erns the secular evolution of epidemics, will lose its inten- 

 sity in proportion to its remoteness from its origin. Those 

 morbid germs, those forms of virus, seem not to be gifted 

 with the power of indefinite reproduction. They exhaust 

 themselves by their own activity. The death they sow at 

 last overtakes themselves some day. Is it the influence of 

 civilization which thus sets a limit to their deadly work, or 

 is that end assigned to their career the fulfillment of a 

 fixed decree ? In any case the cholera must die some day. 

 Till then the best way of working for its annihilation is to 

 pursue the study of it scientifically. 



We must see, therefore, what science and its teachings 

 suggest for the future in the nature of labors that may 

 serve to elucidate the serious problem of the character of 

 cholera, and of infectious diseases generally. Researches 

 in physics and chemistry grow daily easier, so simple are 

 their phenomena, so sure their formulas, their theories so 

 interdependent, and their processes so exact. The share 

 given in them to discovery and origination becomes ever 

 smaller ; that taken by measurement and calculation grows 

 constantly in proportion. The masters have enounced the 

 grand laws and fundamental methods ; the scholars do lit- 

 tle else than determine special cases. This is less true of 



