August 22, 1884/ 



SCIENCE. 



145 



we believe, largely in association, and not 

 merely in the fact that fifty per cent of those 

 attacked with the latter disease die, whereas 

 about eighty-five per cent of typhoid-fever 

 cases survive. The typhoid sufferer, as a 

 survivor even, is robbed far more ruthlessly 

 of time and strength, which by the Anglo- 

 Saxon are transformed into wealth, which to 

 him is life. 



By this seeming digression we would im- 

 press upon readers, begging them to keep it 

 steadily before themselves and their public 

 authorities, the fact that cholera is but one 

 form under which these great general prob- 

 lems of the cause and prevention of infectious 

 diseases present themselves. The prevalence 

 of cholera in France gives the health evangel- 

 ist in the United States, who might otherwise 

 continue crying in the wilderness, at once a 

 text and a hearing, from which those who have 

 come out from their usual routine must not be 

 allowed to depart without a resolve to amend 

 their ways, even though they escape this espe- 

 cial visitation. This threatening of cholera 

 should be the spur to animate northern zeal 

 for the solution of these problems which the 

 south so often finds in the proximity of yellow- 

 fever. 



It now seems quite possible that the United 

 States may escape, at least this year, an in- 

 vasion of epidemic cholera ; but if so, the re- 

 prieve should be used to perfect precautions 

 and vigilance against next year, and to collate, 

 as far as may be, the latest scientific investi- 

 gations with previous observation and experi- 

 ence. Science has already published, either in 

 full or in abstract, the seven reports to the 

 German government emanating from the cholera 

 commission under Dr. Koch in Egypt and in 

 India. These, in giving in a somewhat popular 

 form the results of studies of the fresh excreta 

 of forty cholera patients and of the cadavers 

 of fifty-two recent victims, offer an interesting 

 and doubtless valuable contribution to the sub- 

 ject under discussion, but by no means demon- 

 strate that the active principle of cholera resides 

 in a microbion, or that the particular microbion 

 has been discovered. 



Notwithstanding the labors and advances in 

 this direction during the last ten or twelve 

 years, the number of diseases in regard to 

 which a positive affirmation can be made that 

 they are caused by a micro-organism, and by 

 a specific micro-organism, is still very small, 

 and neither cholera nor typhoid-fever can as 

 3~et be included in that number. The num- 

 ber in regard to which there is onfv a strong 

 probability that the} 7 " result from a specific 

 germ, propagating amid favorable surround- 

 ings, and finding entrance to the s}*stem of 

 the victim under favorable circumstances, is 

 much larger, and must still be regarded as 

 embracing cholera. 



The investigations of the German commis- 

 sion will probably be continued under the au- 

 spices of the German health bureau at Berlin, 

 or otherwise ; and the British government has 

 at last appointed a commission, consisting of 

 Drs. Klein and Heneage Gibbes, to go to India 

 and pursue this inquiry as to the nature of 

 cholera : so that a further elucidation of the sub- 

 ject, and of the precise significance of Koch's 

 observations, may reasonably be anticipated 

 at no distant day. In the mean time it is 

 our duty to protest against a confident appli- 

 cation to the disease itself of measures of 

 prophylaxis, of treatment, of disinfection, or of 

 quarantine, based upon the life-history of the 

 comma-tipped bacillus, or upon its behavior 

 when subjected to the action of certain media 

 or of certain germicides. 



Although their specific microbions have not 

 been definitely demonstrated, experience and 

 observation have fairly established the proba- 

 ble accuracy of certain views in regard to both 

 typhoid-fever and cholera ; and upon these the 

 measures to be adopted against such maladies 

 are at present to be based. They are clearly 

 and concisely set forth in a circular entitled 

 ' Suggestions relative to epidemic cholera.' 

 lately issued by the Massachusetts board of 

 health, itself following generally a previous 

 circular emanating a }-ear ago last June from 

 the English local government board, and re- 

 printed under the same authority, with other 

 supporting papers, last July. 



