THE ABORTIVE TREATMENT OF CHOLERA. 163 



ON THE ABORTIVE TREATMENT OF CHOLERA, AND THE 

 SPECIAL TREATMENT OF ITS SEVERAL STAGES. 



BY WILLIAM TEMPEST, M.B., 

 MSDICAL HKAiTH OFPICEE, TOBONTO. 



At the present time when the great pestilence, par excellence of 

 modern times may be daily expected among us, the ports of Halifax 

 and New York having been already visited by it ; the subject of chol- 

 era in any point of view must possess great interest to all intelligent 

 minds, but to Medical men who may be called upon to use their best 

 endeavours to withstand the inroads of this great destroyer, the sub- 

 ject of treatment must be especially interesting. 



Those of us who have in former epidemics been placed in positions 

 of direct contact with cholera, h*^e felt how impotent were our efforts 

 in many cases to save the victim or relieve the sufferer, and the con- 

 viction that not unfrequently mistakes and want of preparation on the 

 part of both physician and patient may have led to the loss of valu- 

 able lives, induces me to bring the subject before the Section, that 

 the discussion I hope to provoke may assist us in forming an opinion 

 as to the rational treatment of cholera. 



The literature of the subject is " vast and perplexing." The most 

 varied and contradictory opinions have been formed as to the nature 

 of cholera, and still more numerous and conflicting are the modes of 

 treatment recommended. But the great bulk of evidence thus brought 

 before us is surely capable of being sifted, and if we can separate some 

 grain from the chaff a little good will be done. 



I assume that cholera depends upon a poison, communicated in 

 many instances from man to man, by contagion, it may be frequently, 

 or more generally, by what are called epidemic influences, but it is 

 foreign to the object of this paper to advocate the views of either the 

 • contagionists or the non-contagionists. I only allude to the theoreti- 

 cal, that I may better approach the practical. Taking it for granted 

 that the poison of cholera, like that of other zymotic diseases when 

 received into the human system under circumstances favourable to its 

 developement, goes on to reproduce itself, and become capable of 

 affecting other similarly placed bodies, and so on ad infinitum ; I 

 would argue that like other diseases of its class it has a period of in- 



VOL. XI. L 



