202 THE CONTAGIOUS TYPHUS 



evolution. As in small-pox, so in typhoid 

 fever and in most general disorders, Nature 

 for a time must be allowed to exercise her 

 new functions, which succeed each other in 

 due course, and which the physician must 

 not stop ; for if he did, he would accelerate 

 death ; but he must watch with a vigilant 

 eye, in order to assist the vital powers. 



The medical man, satisfied with these 

 facts, will therefore abandon the chimerical 

 hope of finding a specific remedy for such a 

 disease. The virus once absorbed, the frame 

 will endure, and fatally endure, all the morbid 

 phenomena which must produce and succeed 

 each other. Against such a poison no other 

 antidote exists than the poison itself. And this 

 will be easily understood. What necessity 

 have we for a specific remedy to resist a dis- 

 temper, which carries within itself its pre- 

 ventive treatment? If it germinates and is 

 propagated, let us not accuse Nature and render 

 her responsible ; our own blindness, the lack 

 of a community of interests among the people, 

 our social institutions, the still imperfect state 

 of the exact sciences, &c., amply explain how 



