OF THE OX. 251 



At this closing period, which determines the 

 fate of the disease, as we say, there is a 

 tendency to despair of the cure. Seeing the 

 fatal course of most attacks, we lose heart, 

 death seems inevitable, and we yield its prey 

 to its fangs. But let us not despair ; let us 

 remember that, in these febrile infectious 

 diseases, above all, the phenomena must almost 

 always proceed to the last stage of exhaustion 

 of the vital powers to render the cure attain- 

 able. Some patients, smitten with typhoid 

 fever or cholera, have owed their lives to the 

 indefatigable tenacity of the contest in extremis 

 between life and death. 



I still see before me a choleraic patient, 

 whom, during the epidemic of 1849, I had 

 left in the morning at ten o'clock, passing into 

 the cold period. At five o'clock I returned to 

 see him ; the whole family was in tears, and 

 the sheet had been thrown over the patient's 

 head, as if he had already breathed his last. 

 Time was precious to me at that fell season, 

 and I was about to retire, when I applied my 

 finger to the wrist of the sufferer, and felt 

 a faint pulsation at long intervals. I threw 



