396 COMMUNICABILITY OF ASIATIC CHOLERA 
onset of the disease, during the preliminary stage of nervous 
depression, even anterior to the premonitory diarrhoea, to 
get rid of the chances of an occasional absence or dilu- 
tion of the poison. The contagious substance, he argues, 
may exist in too minute a quantity to operate, in certain 
patients and at certain periods; as is illustrated by the ob- 
servation of Ricord, that syphilis cannot be communicated by 
the specific pus, if that fluid be too much diluted with the 
urine ; and also by the experiments of Hertwig on Rabies, 
and more especially by those of Viborg on Glanders — a 
disease which certainly requires (according to his investiga- 
tions) a very large quantity of the morbid blood to pro- 
pagate it. 
2. Experiments with Cholera Ejections and Eejections . — There 
seems no evidence to show that the mere contact of the 
vomited and dejected matters with the skin, is productive of 
evil results to man. In the course of their ordinary duties, 
and in post-mortem examinations, the gastric and intestinal 
fluids must incessantly act on the skin of the hand, as of 
nurses, or even enter w ounds and punctures in the fingers of 
physicians and surgeons ; but no sufficient proofs of resulting 
evil has been recorded. Dr. Jenisch, a Russian physician, 
rubbed his upper and low T er limbs with the vomited fluid, 
put on and wore for eight days the shirt of a Cossack just 
dead of the diease, and bedaubed his face with the cold and 
clammy sw T cat of a dying patient. He had already had 
cholera, and experienced no harm from his experiment. Dr. 
Sokolov, in Orenburg, saw frequently the vomited matters 
spirted into the face of mothers or nurses of the sick, without 
any consequences ensuing. By M. Foy, at Warsaw, the 
vomited matters w T ere tasted with impunity, but not swallowed 
(as many have supposed and repeated).* Drs. Jannichen, 
Veyrat, and Pinel, also confined themselves, and with safety, 
to tasting the gastric discharges ; and, so far as w T e can dis- 
cover, no experimenters have even tasted, much less swal- 
lowed the alvine evacuations. Schmidt states, on his ow r n 
know ledge, that a drunken man swallowed half a beer-glass 
of the vomited fluids, continued intoxicated, and w 7 as quite 
well afterwards. 
Turning our attention from man to animals, w e find several 
instances of inoculation experiments w r ith the cholera dejec- 
tions recorded by Namias, who introduced the fluid, by means 
of needles, under the skin of rabbits, but without effect. In 
Warsaw, also, the dejections had been introduced into the 
cellular tissue of animals with no results. We have our- 
selves injected the pure rice-w ater fluid (from the bow r els, not 
* Du Cholera Morbus de Pologne; Paris, 1832, p. 3, et seq. 
