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52
from the confines of intemperance; and giving
meanwhile a prompt attention and cure to whatever
accidental ailments may arise.
Such, in general language, are our best fortifications
against the poison. It may be well, however,
to add that in our metropolitan climate—perhaps
everywhere else, the human frame tends to require
some periodical aid from medicine. It may be the
excitcment and labour of London; it may be its
atmosphere; it may be native peculiarity: but thus
the fact stands—that there are few persons who do
not at intervals require the re-establishing effects
of what is called tonic treatment. Probably threefourths
of the prescriptions we write are aimed at
this mere tendency to depression in the human
body, as manifested in one form or another. Now—
as a man, going on some distant voyage of exploration,
submits his chronometer to a last intelligent
scrutiny, before he exposes it to the ordeal of other
climates; so, in this matter of frequenting infected
districts, men will do prudently, before they pass
into perils which may test their powers of resistance,
to see that they carry about with them no enfeeblement
or disrepair which a short submission to
medical discipline could effectually remove. For
with epidemic poisons generally—and in a marked
degree with Asiatic Cholera, it seems that all states
of langour, depression, and debility, enhance the
risk of infection.
Beyond these general cautions, there is yet one
which requires very particular mention.