Cholera curable : a demonstration of the causes, non-contagiousness, and successful treatment of the disease / by John Chapman.

  • Chapman, John, 1821-1894.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cholera curable : a demonstration of the causes, non-contagiousness, and successful treatment of the disease / by John Chapman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    trary, much evidence exists, and will be referred to in the course of this essay, disproving the assumption of the existence of such a ^'virus or of any other poison imported into the body from with- out, and demonstrating* that the blood, except in so far as it is contaminated by bilious, urinary, or saccharine matter, owing to morbidly excessive action of the nervous system to be hereafter explained, is essentially healthy. Of course, if there is no trustworthy evidence of the existence of the alleged '^chemical virus, the fact that it must be the product of a living entity is so wholly imaginary as to be quite outside the pale of scientific discussion. But if the reality of this chemical ferment or living entity be assumed, we are left ignorant of its source, or how it is produced, and by what means it gains access to the human body; and though Dr. Klein affirms that in some cases the linen and clothes are the means by which cholera is con- veyed, and that persons not sick of cholera may convey the disease from one part to another, which proves that the infective agency is not necessarily associated with the choleraic dejecta, he adds his testimony to that of hundreds of other witnesses that in hospitals devoted to the treatment of choleixt the attendants remain unaffected as c6 rule.'' Moreover, he adduces a number of facts which, as he says, prove that choleraic evacuations are harmless. He adds: From all my experience I con- clude that the bodies of patients suffering from cholera do not contain organisms which could be regarded as specific and pathogenic, and in this I am directly opposed to Dr. Koch. In all true infectious diseases the organisms are present in the morbid products in great numbers : but such is not the case with cholera. When it is remembered that linen not soiled can convev the infection, and that water which had come in direct contact with choleraic discharges did not produce the disease, I consider that my position is rendered still more secure. When this last-quoted passage and Dr. Klein^s assertion that ^chemical virus produced by a living entity, outside the body, acts on the blood, the nerve-centres, and the organs of circulation, and thus gives rise to all the phenomena of cholera, are considered together they prove rather bewildering, and I confess I find myself unable to harmonize them. In fact, it ^eems very difficult, if not impossible, to form any definite con- ception of Dr. Klein's chemical ferment, which, having been produced by his living entity, is, as he alleges, the cause of cholera; it is evidently very subtle and very capricious : while frequently renouncing the clothes of cholera patients, and even their evacuations, as well as water which has come in direct contact with them, as means of conveyance from one person