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of which many died." Dr. Richardson remarks on the exhalation of sulphur compounds of ammonia in some diseases, and in all cases of "fœtor of the breath," and their effect of inducing symptoms of a disease resembling "typhus." These facts show very plainly how typhus of the worst type the hunger-typhus, for example, of the Russian famine last year— may originate, and may create the worst possible infection where there has been no previous infection. It is all the more satisfactory to know that, under proper conditions of abundance of good air, there need not be danger to those who have the care of typhus patients, and still less to those in the same house.

This is much more true of cholera. "The maxim for cholera is," says Dr. Creighton, "take care of the conditions, and the disease will take care of itself." He says that in Great Britain "a case of cholera is received into the country with much the same sort of assurance as a case of typhoid fever would be." He considers that in cases of typhoid, or in cases of cholera, "the diffusion of both diseases can be limited [so far as diffusion by infection is concerned] by disposing of the discharges of the sick in such a way that they shall neither taint the soil nor the water, nor ferment on unwashed linen or bedding." The overwhelmingly important thing to consider is that "wherever a filth-sodden soil receives the choleraic matters, poisonous miasmata will arise from it; and such miasmata will also arise, even in houses or on board ship, or from bundles and boxes of effects, if cleanliness be thoroughly overpowered by the stress of events."

Such overpowering of cleanliness took place not a little in Hamburg last autumn, soiled effects being thrown together in passage-ways and halls pending the hurried removal of the sick or the dead, when even the dead or the sick, at their worst, involved less danger of infection, and the filthy effects fermenting in the hot air were exhaling the worst form of cholera-poison. The danger from Russian or other suffering immigrants is not from any cholera they may have, but from their filthy persons and filthy belongings. Effects which have been packed up after exposure to miasmatic poison will give off the poison as a volatile virus of most dangerous intensity when they come to be opened. Pilgrims, who wear

without change their pilgrim garb, will become foul in person, and on this foulness will be concentrated the miasmatic poison which they may breed themselves or may get from the air of places poisoned by cholera-miasm. This miasm, however, belongs peculiarly to malignant cholera, in places like parts of Asiacertain parts of India and Mecca, in Arabia, for example,- where the filthsodden soil, under intense heat of the sun, produces the worst exhalations of the poison which acts as by far the worst of all the causes of cholera. The authority to which we have referred for exact knowledge of the two kinds of cholera, simple and malignant, tells us that they "are essentially different both as to their causation and their pathological relationships," while yet "these two diseases may, in individual cases, present many symptoms of mutual resemblance." In regard to the simple cholera, compared with which malignant or Asiatic cholera is another and a different disease, our authority says, after stating what the chief symptoms are- purging and vomiting, severe griping pain and painful

cramps:

"The effect upon the system is rapid and alarming, a few hours of such an attack sufficing to reduce the strongest person to a state of extreme prostration. The surface of the body becomes cold, the pulse weak, the voice husky, striking manner those of malignant cholera. In and the whole symptoms may resemble in a unfavorable cases, particularly where the disorder is epidemic, death may result within forty-eight hours. Generally, however, the attack is arrested and recovery soon follows, although there may remain for a considerable time a degree of irritability of the alimentary canal, rendering necessary the utmost care in regard to diet. Attacks of this kind are of frequent occurrence in summer and autumn in almost all countries. They appear specially liable to occur when cold and damp alternate with heat. Occasionally the disorder prevails so extensively as to constitute an epidemic. The exciting causes of an attack are in many cases errors in diet, particularly the use of unripe fruit and new vegetables, and the excessive drinking of cold liquids during perspiration.

Outbreaks can sometimes be traced to the use of impure water, or to noxious emanations from the sewers."

This statement of causes is meager and inaccurate. Fruit, meat, or fish that has begun to decay is especially a cause with those whose supplies and cooking are what poverty and ignorance determine. Such vegetables as cucumbers and summer squash are doubtful for some per

sons; and melons the same, because in case of indigestion they act much as rotten fruit would. The danger, however, comes from causes which affect digestion and disturb the action of the bowels. Extreme heat begins it, by promoting fermentation in excess of natural conditions, especially in the bowels. This may for most persons pass off, or may cause a moderate attack of cholera morbus, or in children cholera infantum.

Under the stimulus of unwonted heat," says Dr. Maclean, "the biliary secretion is increased to such a degree as to provoke bilious diarrhoea." Some persons, says Dr. Maclean, are disposed to relaxation of the bowels from slight causes, and such are among the first to suffer from choleraic hot weather. For such persons especially care of the diet is of the utmost importance. Lobster not perfectly fresh, and oysters, may prove very dangerous food. Dr. Maclean says that rock oysters supplied at certain seasons in the market of Madras are a cause of choleraic disease there, "hardly to be distinguished from cholera." Out of every hundred an uncertain number of them are distinctively poisonous, whether from decomposition or some other cause," is Dr. Maclean's statement, and he relates the case of a gentleman known to be prone to diarrhoea who indulged in the oysters, when in season, contrary to medical advice, and upon an attack following delayed calling in his doctor, from shame at having indulged foolishly, until it was too late to save him.

It is very important to note here how a sudden change from heat to cold, from hot and muggy to chilly and damp, may precipitate attacks in great number. These are due to taking cold; very slight as cold, but, going to the bowels, enough for great harm. Many persons will thus take cold, during hot weather, by sitting out in the night coolness, conscious only of a pleasant effect, which yet is slightly chilling and, under the circumstances, dangerous. The night air always has a possibility of more or less malaria, and this may play a part in causing choleraic disease. It is, however, in any case, the taking cold which does the mischief. Dr. Maclean says that "dysentery in hot climates can often be traced to exposure to relatively cold air," taken as a relief from the heat. Both bad water and foul air, especially a privy atmosphere or sewer

air and water contaminated by the excreta of the sick, or by any focal filth, are extremely dangerous. Dr. Maclean says:

"Diarrhoea is often the means by which intaken into the system are quickly thrown out. jurious matters, solid or gaseous, that have been Two friends of mine, driving in an open carriage, pulled up for a few minutes near a livery stable in a country town; close to the carriage was a grating for ventilating the main sewer; a quantity of boiling water was poured into the sewer from a neighboring stable; in a moment the carriage and its inmates were enveloped in a cloud of watery vapor, carrying with it a putrid and intolerable stench. To this my friends were exposed only a few seconds, as the coachman instantly drove quickly away. three were soon attacked by nausea, had to hasten home, and were smartly purged, the evacuations having the same offensive odor as the sewer air that so quickly affected them."

All

The lesson here of violent diarrhoea caused by exhalations of poison taken with the breath, is extremely important. It shows what volatile poison so taken will do, without reference to any microbe, and it makes plain the extreme absurdity of saying that the cleanly and wholesome are not exposed to attack. In many circumstances any person may suffer attack, although some are far more susceptible than others to violent attack. If the Chicago river, under the windows of the great wholesale houses along Market street, were made boiling hot, not a person within reach of the exhalations would escape a sudden and violent attack of choleraic disease, the fatality from which would be frightful if the victims had to remain within reach of the poisoned air. Even with only more moderate causes at work, such as will reach every one, the contents of the bowels are at all times and in all persons a possible basis of attack, either from the effect of extreme heat, or from chill after heat, or from inhalation of poison with the breath, or from some effect of food not proper at the moment, or from specific poison taken in food or drink.

Nor does this exhaust the list of possible causes of choleraic disturbance. This disturbance is a fact of the chemistry of the system, the chemistry especially of the intestines and their contents, and of the blood. Not a few things, separately or together, may promote it, or some one thing may suddenly precipitate it. Cases are called Cases are called "sporadic" where the cause or causes act separately in each case, and the cases are more or

less scattered.

If the cause or causes act upon a body of people together the term epidemic" applies [epi, upon; demos, people]. If the causes originate on the spot and are peculiar to the place, the term "endemic" is applied. The usual use of this term, however, is far from accurate. Cholera may be wholly endemic, say in Bengal, from the exhalations of poison in the air. These exhalations may be carried through the air to another region of India, and cholera result in certain filthy places, but not in other places which are not filthy. The imported poison works in and through the local poison, and the cholera is thus partly endemic. There is much more wholly endemic cholera than is commonly recognized; many spots develop the disease from causes almost or quite wholly local; and however clearly and remarkably the infection may travel, it finds stopping-places amid local causes. It is entirely a mistake, however, to assume that a pestilence of cholera cannot originate without the aid of infection coming from elsewhere. In Persia; at Mecca In Persia; at Mecca and other places in Arabia; in Russia, after famine and the hunger-typhus; in Hamburg, when its many canals, which serve as sewers, are left dry of water under an excessively hot sun; and in Chicago, if the river should be bad enough, with protracted extreme heat, there may be cholera; not probably of the same pestilential severity as in the seats of it in India, and not of the same severity in any two situations; but thoroughly endemic, of wholly local origin, and a severely raging epidemic, more or less approaching the worst malignant cholera, according as the conditions are more or less bad in their range and in their violence. But where these endemic conditions, giving an air charged with the worst cholera-virus, are not present, as they are not in most cases and places, it is hardly too much to say that in some instances, at least, where local causes are brought into action by climatic conditions, the only imported element is the idea, the expectation- a mental element, acting through the nervous states of the susceptible.

A very large place belongs to purely nervous causes. Among the causes of diarrhoea, with which cholera of any kind always begins, Dr. Maclean mentions "mental emotion, acting on the

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mucous membrane or muscular coat of the intestine, by impressions conveyed through the nervous system," and he instances the number of men attacked "under the influence of emotions excited by the near prospect of battle,"-temporary attacks only, because the emotions quickly pass away under the fierce excitement of combat." It is almost beyond doubt that purely mental action, whether in sudden shock or protracted strain, may cause almost any variety of choleraic complaint. As we write this one of our leading journals says, under the head, "Sensational Newspaper Reports may Do more Harm than the Disease" "It is agreed by medical authorities that the virulence of an epidemic may be increased by the element of fear in the public mind. Dr. D. B. St. John Roosa, president of the New York Academy of Medicine, writing on the cholera prospect, says: During an epidemic of any kind each individual should endeavor to maintain his mental equilibrium-in other words, to keep cool. It is very difficult in our time to accomplish this, for the simple reason that some of the daily journals think it their duty to print sensational headlines, and sometimes sensational paragraphs, which have very little actual foundation, but which excite and terrify the timid and sometimes even the brave-hearted.

The method of the mental cause is more simple and sure from the fact that other causes are at work, bringing a large number of persons very near to the danger-point, so that a shock of alarm or the strain of fear may cause an explosion when the contrary influence would no less certainly ward off the danger.

The New York scare in 1892 on the trifling basis of a few cases of mostly mild choleraic trouble, was not an immense tragedy only because the only causes at work looking in the direction of cholera were the newspapers, the wild despots of quarantine, the deadly but miserably deluded bacteriologists, tumbling over one another in the maddest chase after the comma bacillus in the dejecta of an extremely sporadic case of too much watermelon, and the worthy but badly misinformed and needlessly scared president, medical authorities, and other dignitaries, of the United States. Harper's Weekly scored the newspapers after the scare for the part they played. Thus, with much more, it said:

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'An attack of cramps became the subject of terrorizing headline and panic-breeding text. The 'news feature' of the threatened calamity was made use of for all that it was worth to the counting-room. An unreasoning terror was spread abroad in the land by what was at least a lack of forethought on the part of some of the daily newspapers. Finally the business men of the city began to fear for their fall trade. The largest advertisers at last appealed to the business offices of the hysterical newspapers, and demonstrated to them that trade was in jeopardy. The expected result followed. The cholera news disappeared from the front pages, while the staring headlines dwindled to proportions more in harmony with the truth of the

situation."

The circus of looseness and lies was led by the World, with the Herald at its heels, the Tribune and Sun only less hysterical, and not even the Evening Post (before Mr. Godkin escaped from the great Jenkins detention side-show) quite keeping its head. Mr. Pulitzer's Hessians did the Light Brigade business into the valley of death in a style that called for ten thousand obituaries on the roll of the plague, and only succeeded in corral

ing one case-a green servant-girl, inexperienced in watermelon, who got well in spite of a floating hospital, a staff of health officers, a medical faculty, the special police, and the bacteriological squad victorious over the dejecta, and bearing proudiy on their spears the "Asiatic" microbe of Irish diarrhoea. The success which the hysterical press might have had in stampeding the costive, even, into cholera, or into dejecta of some kind sufficient to give the bacteriologists a good "Asiatic" inning, was arrested by the jeopardy of trade interest, which very promptly "stamped out the plague" by putting its foot down hard on the newspapers. The incident was a disgrace to all concerned far beyond the witch unpleasantness of ancient Salem. There was no serious cholera anyway, much less any imported Hamburg cholera, nor even the faintest possibility of anything "Asiatic." It was a scare, pure and simple."

COLUMBUS-AN HISTORICAL ESTIMATE

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name of Justin Winsor was twice given "Windsor," and the fictitious letters and facts of a novel were treated as historical. Of Columbus it was said to start with : "Clubs have formed to read, mark, and inwardly digest every crumb of information concerning the man-deity." Upon this frank avowal of Columbus-worship followed such statements as these:

"Detractors are busy, of course. . . As if a gap of four hundred years might not swallow up virtues as well as faults."

"To Columbus has certainly been allotted the full credit of his great gift to us-a country."

"He must have been a great and good man, let the detractors say what they may.'

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"There are raging iconoclasts pulling everything about one's ears, destroying faiths which were adamant and eternal, one had thought. Let us cling to this one-for it costs nothing to do so until the last fibre breaks, and then-go with it."

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"I think him the most consummate liar that I have ever found in the history of the country. He made lying a fine art and practiced it all his life. I do not say this because he was a Roman Catholic, but because he professed to be so profoundly religious, when, as a matter of fact, he was very far from a saint. You can study his whole life, and you will find that it was one of fabrication and greed for gold. He not only lied himself to Ferdinand and Isabella, but he compelled his crew to lie also. Lying was not his worst trait either, for he was the first to establish slavery in America, which cursed the new country for centuries. He was not a benefactor, for all that he did was for gold. He would not sail on his voyage until he was made an admiral by the king and received a promise

of fabulous remuneration."

This is not detraction. It is exact history, and it falls far short of the truththe whole truth of the case against Columbus; but it stood alone as an expres sion of American opinion in New York Hon. C. F. Adams In Boston a similar exception to current utter

Brands the Discoverer a Fraud

that of the dealings by which he strove to
effect his purposes reveals a lust of the
flesh and of base desire at once brutal and
shameless.

Dr. Poole Speaks Dr. Poole, the eminent
for Scholars
scholar-librarian of Chi-
cago, in two or three important articles,
made clear that learning cannot accord
Columbus the praise of either remarkable
greatness, or what would now be consid-
ered respectable goodness. It seems,
therefore, not amiss to get carefully into
shape for student-readers the evidence on
which what may be called THE CASE
AGAINST COLUMBUS rests, and will for-
ever rest.

Columbus's Base
Treatment of a
Woman

In the will of Columbus, after charging his son, Don Diego, to provide for the saying of masses every day "for the souls of all the faithful ances was furnished by dead, and for my soul and that of my father and mother, and wife," he goes on to direct that Diego shall pay his debts, and then concludes with these words:

Hon. Charles Francis Adams, who was one of the speakers at a meeting held in the old church of his native town of Quincy, and whose views occasioned the Boston Transcript to say:

"Mr. Adams attacked the theories of the preceding speakers, who were all eulogistic of Columbus, and the glories of America as the result of his discovery. Columbus, he said, brought with him the Inquisition, persecution and that greed for gold that brought with it so many misfortunes. The vilest sins against humanity and God were widespread in the first twenty five years of America's existence, and a more corrupt country it would be hard to find. Columbus was a bigot. Columbus was visionary. I bow to the fact that as an individual he was a great man and entitled to what great results implied. But just so long as the crew that came with Columbus ruled America the outlook was worse than pen could describe. He maintained that America would have been discovered without him, and that it would have been better to have delayed that discovery one hundred years. Better settlers, better rulers, he said, came later, and to the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock America owes her standing to-day."

Even here credit was given Columbus beyond what the facts permit. He contrived to cut a great figure, but he is found, when the facts are properly considered, to have been a great man in no real and true sense, and to have been a good man only after the fashion of professions which were no restraint upon a full measure of the worst passions of the human animal. The record of the terms without which he refused to sail is a monumental exposure of his greed, and

'And I direct him that he shall have special care for Beatrice Enriquez, the mother of Don Ferdinand, my son; that he shall provide for her so that she may live comfortably, like a person should for whom I have so much regard. And this shall be done for the ease of my conscience, because this has weighed heavily on my soul. The reason therefor it is not proper to mention here."

man-deity view of Columbus in connecThose who so ardently espoused the tion with celebration of the origins of America, undertook to show that the woman referred to was a second wife. But they were compelled to close their eyes to the following indisputable facts:

1. Las Casas, who wrote at the time, with the best means of knowing, and with the highest regard for, the truth, states that the birth of Ferdinand was without marriage between the father and mother.

2. From the birth of this son, in 1488, about August 15, to May 20, 1506, when Columbus died, no hint anywhere appears that Columbus had ever had any other wife than the mother of Don Diego, whom he refers to in his will as "my wife."

3. During these eighteen years the mother of Ferdinand was left out of sight, if not out of mind, by Columbus; not from lack of regard for her, if we may believe him, but for a reason which had burdened his conscience and weighed heavily on

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