CHOLERA ASUTICA. 719 



that is Dot too new and has not become sour. On the other hand, 

 all excess should be carefully shunned. The foolish assertion, that 

 these rules are useless, as many persons who are careful of their diet 

 are taken sick, while others who live carelessly escape, should be an- 

 swered with rational arguments, and persons who are susceptible to 

 reason should be shown that no one knows that he is not already in- 

 fected with cholera, and that the impending attack will certainly have 

 a very severe course, if some other injurious influence besides the 

 cholera-poison be acting on the intestinal canal. Lastly, the patients 

 should be advised to send for a physician as soon as they are attacked 

 by a diarrhoea, and to remain in bed till the physician comes, to drink 

 a few cups of hot coffee or peppermint-tea, and to take some " cholera 

 drops " which they should have on hand. It cannot be denied that 

 energetic diaphoresis occasionally averts an attack of cholera. At 

 least, in every cholera epidemic, we see persons that have been at- 

 tacked by copious diarrhoea, great debility, cramps in the legs, and 

 even vomiting, and who, on account of these symptoms have drunk 

 large quantities of hot liquids (usually coffee with rum), buried in the 

 bed-clothes and reeking with perspiration, while the passages, which 

 were often discolored and beginning to resemble rice-water discharges, 

 and the vomiting also, have ceased. Experience also teaches that in 

 such cases, if the sweating be arrested too soon, a true cholera attack 

 not unfrequently comes on, and that it is well not to let a cholera 

 patient leave his bed till he has had a formed stool. The cholera 

 drops, usually named after some well-known physician, that are sold 

 by the apothecaries during cholera epidemics, consist of laudanum, 

 generall/ with the addition of some ethereal tincture, which is super- 

 fluous and often detracts from the efficacy. Their use without medical 

 advice should be recommended, because opium is one of the most 

 efficient remedies against cholera diarrhoea, and because its success is 

 the more certain the more recent the case. The so-called Russian 

 cholera drops are particularly celebrated: IjL tinct. valer. aeth. 3ij; 

 vin. ipecac, 3i; tinct. opii 3j; ol. menth. pip. gtt. v. fll. S. twenty 

 to twenty-five drops every hour or two. 



While the most careful prophylactic treatment often fails, we are 

 still less able to fulfil the indications from the cause or from the dis- 

 ease, after cholera has once broken out. In almost every epidemic, 

 especially toward its close, when the malignancy of the disease has 

 abated, arid the number of recoveries is greater than that of the deaths, 

 certain specifics are recommended both by physicians and quacks. 

 But their reputation has never lasted through the first weeks of a sub- 

 sequent epidemic. Radix sumbul, carbo trichloratus, and other rem- 

 edies recommended as panaceas in cholera, have very justly been 



