296 NATURE AND LIFE. 
complications and difficulties which make it in many in- 
stances inefficient and impracticable. Not only is it difficult 
to find sufficiently vigilant officials, but it is often impossi- — 
ble to block the transfers and the movements of travelers 
which are agents in spreading the epidemic. 
Ill. 
If it is out of the question to destroy the cholera at its 
source, if it is very difficult to prevent its making its way to 
us, does not science at least possess an antidote to meet it 
with, a remedy to fight with against it when it has succeed- 
ed in making a lodgment among us? Just as in speaking 
of the nature of the evil the physician must own the almost 
entire uncertainty of knowledge, so, in view of the victims 
of the cholera’s attacks, he must confess the impotence of 
art, almost always beyond remedy. The prescriptions sug- 
gested for the cure of cholera are as numerous as the sup- 
positions framed for its explanation. On either hand the 
illusion is the same. Those who regard the cholera as a 
disease caused by parasites,’ naturally look for the methods 
of destroying these parasites. Doctors who look on it as 
an affection by virus, occasioning a kind of molecular 
change in the whole mass of the humors, and especially of ~ 
the albuminoid matters, are persuaded that acids might be 
of healing effect in these cases. Others, supposing that 
the most important point of all is to restore the liquidity 
of blood coagulated in the veins, resort to alkalies. Salts 
of copper have also been employed, regarded by some phy- 
sicians as genuine specifics, as also alkaloids, such as caf- 
eine, etc. Those physiologists who fix the seat of the dis- 
ease In the nervous structure of the great sympathetic are 
1 Among the supporters of this notion must be cited a German doctor, 
Hallier, who thinks it is proved that the cholera is caused by mierococ- 
cus. And Hallier explains all diseases by micrococcus, or by infinitely 
little beings of the same order. 
