The Westminster Review, October. (Triibner and Co.)—The inde- pendent section
of this number contains an interesting article by Dr. John Chapman, of Paris, on "The Non-Contagiousness, Causation, and Scientific Treatment of Cholera." If the author can be held to have established his theory—and it will probably be allowed that he makes out a ease which deserves notice—he will have effected a revolution- in the particular province of medicine with which he is here con- cerned. In the first place, quarantine is swept away. Then the terror of the disease is materially reduced by its being referred to causes which are in a great degree removable. Dr. Chapman, as we understand him, does not believe in a specific cholera poison (of course he is quite incredulous about Dr. Koch's bacillus). Under certain conditions of atmosphere, dc., diarrhoea becomes cholera. These conditions are frequently present in a certain degree ; some- times they become intensified, and then there is an outbreak of cholera. But an attack of the disease may be and is often checked by timely
treatment of the symptomatic diarrhcca. While typhoid, for instance, once taken into the system, must have its way, cholera may be stopped.
As to treatment, Dr. Chapman strongly disapproves both of opiates and of purgatives. His remedy is the application of ice to the spine. The instances in which it has been employed do not seem to have been numerous enough to warrant any positive deduction ; but the results are encouraging, so far as they go.
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