Epidemics. 231 



great changes in a short time. If small in quantity, then the 

 change is much slighter ; and if fresh and active, and in 

 large. quantity, then it is necessarily fatal first acting upon 

 the heart, and then upon the lungs ; suspending in part the 

 functions of both those organs, whilst rapid enteric, and 

 probably also gastric desquamation, allows the rapid 

 filtering through of the more serous part of the blood. But, 

 if this filtration can be checked within given limits, and the 

 vitality of the blood is not entirely over-balanced, the 

 ability of the blood to readjust the disorganization by a 

 converse catalytic power, which resides in so much blood as 

 is still unchanged by the morbid action of the poisonous 

 fungi within it then restoration to integrity in the blood is 

 rendered easier and more certain, and resumption of the 

 normal functions of all parts of the body, including the 

 brain, kidneys, liver, heart, lungs, and muscles, etc., is 

 rendered more uniform, and of much shorter duration, and 

 therefore much safer to the patient, than if left too viscid 

 by over-draining. 



But, it is probable that agues of various kinds have a 

 fungiferous origin, as well as cholera ; and, almost to speak 

 metaphorically, cholera is the prince of agues, and is by far 

 the most acute and the most fatal, as well as in our own 

 days the most wide-spread ague the world has ever seen; 

 though cholera is of endemic origin in India, and of very 

 great antiquity, as it is referred to in the Vedant, yet 

 perhaps not as old as Brahminism itself. For the Divine 

 Books, or the Vedas, were probably not completed till the 

 early part of the Christian era, and of course the Vedant 

 somewhat later. If such really be the case, the antiquity of 

 cholera, so far as written evidence is concerned, will 

 scarcely be so old as some would claim it to be, and its 

 extension beyond the Indian continent not quite so long 

 delayed as some writers suppose, though it has often 



