and restore its normal action, no amount of mere surface washing, nor any quantity of poisonous lotions can be of any avail. Even warm water bathing will not free the system from these disagreeable lodgers, and, in fact, failing proper healthy exercise, there is no means that can be commanded equal to the Bath. Hot Air, and not Hot Water, is the sole remedy, and this is one great reason why there should be Hot-air Baths in every town, and why every one who, lacking the necessary exercise, desires to preserve personal purity-thorough integrity of the skin organism internally and externally-without which there cannot be perfect health-should consider it a moral duty to habitually take the Bath.

CHAPTER XXII.

The effect of Drug treatment in Cholera-Its universal failureThe Hydropathic treatment-The disease popularly known as "The Black Death"-The Drug treatment of it on the Continent-The mal-practice of Irish Physicians despite of all experience-Effects of Temperature.

CHOLERA is one of the many diseases which, in a marked degree, has baffled all the skill and resources of drug-practitioners. No medical man, pretending to character, will now presume to possess any control over this disease by his drugs. Physic is not one whit advanced in this respect, but is just now as ignorant and as powerless as in 1832; and yet how book shelves do groan under the weight of choleraic literature-an accumulation of pretentious volumes filled with wild theories and wilder remedies, conjectures and modes of treatment all in as endless a variety as the reflections in a kaleidoscope, yet all founded on drugging, and all pretending to cure by drugs! "There is no known cure for Cholera," says Dr. Johnson, Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in King's College, London, and, he adds, "there probably never will be." This probability may be taken for an absolute certainty as far as the Physic School is concerned, but not so as regards Hydropathic practice, as wel will explain.

All the authentic information that has been obtained concerning Cholera, shows that it is a very simple form of disease, and that there is nothing necessarily incurable about it. In the Report of the Cholera Epidemic of 1865, in the Maltese Islands," by Surgeons Adams and Welch, published by the Army Medical Department, there is a great deal of valuable

information concerning the disease in all its forms, and the conclusions arrived at may be briefly stated—

First-Cholera is contagious, which some theorists have doubted. This is proved by the influence exerted by human intercourse in the diffusion of the disease throughout the Maltese Islands. This, indeed, is now the general opinion, and it is always the safest to act on.

Second-Three varieties of diarrhoea were observed during the epidemic, having very marked distinctive characteristics. One was the ordinary summer diarrhoea, which was more common than generally, among both the military and the civil population, but this was attributed to excess in eating fruit, which was cheap, as the rich would not purchase any, and to irregular and drunken habits among the soldiers. This form, however, was very tractable, and did not appear to have any tendency to develop into cholera. The second form exhibited every degree of intensity, and when severe was classed under choleraic diarrhoea," but, "although intractable, it evinced no tendency to pass beyond a certain point, or to assume a more malignant form." The third form was so completely intractable that in sixty-one cases, where every possible attempt was made to check it, in none did it succeed, but it was invariably followed by full development of cholera. The medical reporters say that this form "was clearly an early stage of cholera, and it may be fairly questioned whether a single case was prevented developing itself into cholera by treatment directed towards the suppression of intestinal flux." And it is further positively declared that what is called generally "premonitory diarrhoea tending towards cholera, but easily checked," was not met with during the epidemic, but, on the contrary, the conclusion arrived at is, "that the diarrhoea which appeared to yield to treatment would have stopped without it, while that form of diarrhoea which tended to pass into cholera, continued its fatal course in spite of every repressive means."

Third-When the treatment was repressive of Nature's efforts to obtain relief, when to that end all the appliances of

practice were directed, can we be surprised that, as the report declares, every mode of drug treatment failed. "System after system failed," and the mortality was fearful, rising as high as 72 per cent.! But from their failure there is much to be learned-much that confirms the previous conclusions of scientific inquirers who are not prejudicially wedded to preconceived opinions and irrational theories.

Now, it is most important to note, that of all the various modes of drug medication employed, those were the most fatal which dozed the system freely with drugs and stimulants, and those most successful, that is, the least deadly, which left Nature to herself, or gently aided her efforts at self relief. Thus among

the military, under drug-medication carried to such an extent that even a deadly poison, strychnia, was administered in one and a half grain doses! -the mortality was as high as 72 per cent., whereas among the civil population who were subjected to treatment "of the mildest character, leaving the patient very much to his chance," the mortality was only 62 per cent. A very high rate, certainly; but under the drug treatment in vogue among us, the mortality has ranged from 30 to 67 per cent. The civil practitioners in Malta employed drugs sparingly. "Emetics were occasionally used, and also mercury; stimulants never; castor-oil treatment by a few;" but even with this comparatively mild treatment the rate of mortality was fearful.

Now, the whole gist of this able report goes to establish the conclusion that Drug Medication is not only utterly worthless in Cholera, but that it is positively destructive. The whole Pharmacopoeia has signally failed to provide a curative, and any of its various compounds, even in their mildest form, must be productive of harm, for they are all alike revolting to Nature. Such a system of treatment has only one result-to lessen the patients' chances of recovery, and thus by aggravating the disease its mortality is increased.

There is no reason now to doubt that, as Surgeons Adams and Welch report, "the symptoms of cholera are due to the presence of a material poison, and that the exit of the materies

morbi is chiefly by the intestinal tract, commencing early in the disease, and extending apparently into convalescence." Surely, if this be the case, the conclusion suggested by the British Medical Journal appears to be irresistible, namely-"that the repressive action of opiates and astringents must be injurious by impeding the exit of the poison." Surely if the poison be in the blood, and if Nature is endeavouring to relieve the system of its presence by expelling it through the intestinal tract, it requires no superhuman effort of intellectual power to arrive at the conclusion, that the sooner the poison is eliminated from the system the better it is likely to be for the patient. This, surely, is common sense, which does not, however, generally tally with a drug practitioner's sense.

This truth was proclaimed more than twenty years ago by Hydropathists, and Drug Doctors got hold of it, and perverted it into what they call the eliminative treatment of cholerathe eliminative agents being, of course, drugs! Thus Professor Johnson says:-"The adoption of an eliminative treatment of cholera-by means of emetics, mild purgatives, and copious draughts of water—would, I am persuaded, do much to lessen the mortality from this great scourge. The very general conviction as to the worse than uselessness of alcoholic stimulants in the collapse of cholera is more to be relied upon, inasmuch as it has been forced upon men's minds in opposition to preconceived notions and prevailing theories.”

But are alcoholic stimulants one whit worse than emetics and purgatives? We have seen how purgatives act-how all medicine acts-in being followed by effects more or less exhaustive of vital force; and thus, at the very time when the skilful scientific physician requires to employ all his resources to nourish and cherish the vital power of the patient, the eliminative druggist steps in with his emetics and purgatives to waste, depress, and exhaust that power! It is true there appears to be a difference in the destructive character of drug treatment. Dr. Bullen says calomel is just 37 per cent. less murderous than opiates and stimulants! "The treatment by calomel," he says,