GREAT EPIDEMICS—ASIATIC CHOLERA. 297 
induced to preach up antispasmodic drugs. Ina word, rem- 
edies have almost all seemed to fail of useful effect, and the 
most sensible treatment is still the same as that of cholera 
in the early days, the treatment of symptoms. It consists, 
not in prostrating the disease solidly by making one single 
heroic attack on it, but in fighting it through successive 
skirmishes by attacking the various symptoms of the evil, 
one after the other. Cholera-patients have cramps—we 
endeavor to check them. They suffer cold—we warm them 
by frictions and drinks. Their circulation becomes slow 
and languid—we try to restore its regular conditions by 
stimulating the flow of the blood. The secretions diminish— 
we provoke them by suitable means. Thus, and without 
attacking the evil at its root, we often reach fortunate re- 
sults. The great obstacle to the action of remedies on 
cholera-patients is the fact that they can absorb nothing. 
Some doctors have had the idea of injecting medicinal prin- 
ciples directly, either beneath the skin, or into the veins. 
Some attempts of this kind have succeeded, and this method 
is the right one. Only we need to continue our advances 
in it with persistent and systematic boldness, if we would 
secure certain advance in the treatment of cholera and other 
diseases. Instead of feeling the way blindly and timidly 
in experiments on the living subject, there is need of force 
and directness in proceeding. It is the only way to have 
at some future day strong and tempered weapons for our 
contests with disease. 
It is perhaps proper in connection with this to point 
out to the attention of physicians the remarkable proper- 
ties of the alkaline borates and silicates recently disclosed 
by Dumas. These salts, which exert no very striking 
poisonous influence upon superior organisms, are on the 
contrary fatal to the microscopic beings and the subtile 
agents, organized or formless, which take an undeniable 
part in infectious diseases. Experiments made quite late- 
