View report page

31
stances, and in respect of particular cases, they may
assist the operation of the choleraic poison. Nor will
I pretend so exactly to limit the affinities of that
which evolves this poison, as to deny that rooms,
foetid with animal exhalations, may (like cesspoolsodden
cellars) be ready to answer the stimulus of
its infection. And at any rate, I think it highly
important to recognise that all sanitary defects
which embarrass the excretive purification of the
human body—whether by breathing or otherwise,
do naturally tend in the same direction as the
causes of Cholera, and are liable—if only by indirect
means, to become accessory in its destructive work.
But, deeply impressed as I am with the importance
of these considerations, I esteem it of still
higher consequence, if measures are ever to be
taken for an effective prevention of the disease,
that the principle of its specific causation should be
steadfastly kept in view. What may be the exact
chemistry of this process, I do not pretend to say :
urging only, that, in all human probability, the
poison arises in specific changes impressed by some
migratory agent upon certain refuse elements of
life. Perhaps nowhere, and certainly not before
your Honourable Court, can it be desirable, in the
present immaturity of pathological knowledge, to
argue as to the first origin or absolute nature of
that wandering influence which determines in particular
localities the generation of epidemic malaria.
Simply—since it leads to all-important practical