Instead of averting the cholera by avoiding fresh air at night, the experience of the last summer seems to have taught us just the contrary; for whilst most physicians admit that they are still unable to explain satisfactorily, the cause or remedy for this most mysterious disease, that has within a lifetime carried its fifty millions of victims from time to eternity, they almost universally believe it is a foul air poison, and they have as yet found no surer prevention than pure air.
One of the most striking illustrations of this, and perhaps one of the most wonderful cures of cholera on record, was that of the New York Workhouse on Blackwell's Island. It lasted only nine days, but in that brief period one hundred and twenty-three out of eight hundred inmates died. I visited the building with Dr. Hamilton, on the third day after its appearance, but the hospital then contained sixty or seventy patients, and some twenty-five or thirty had died within twenty-four hours.
Dr. Hamilton attributed the rapid propagation and fatality of the disease, after it once had gained admission, mainly to confinement and crowding. It was observed that the cholera was confined, for several days, among the women; the women had the smallest apartments, were most crowded in their cells, and with few exceptions, were employed within the building, in close contact with each other during the day. The men were employed mostly in the quarries and out of doors.
The doctor's prescription on that occasion is worth studying. It is very short and simple, however.
A slight change was made in the diet; disinfectants were used; fifteen drops of the tincture of capsicum with an ounce of whisky, as a stimulant at night, was all the medicine given to each individual. But the great means the doctor relied upon for success, was pure air all the time. They were kept out of doors from morning until night, and all the windows were kept open night and day; and although in the hot weather of summer, fire was made in the wards, to insure more perfect ventilation. In six days after the initiation of these simple hygienic measures, the epidemic entirely disappeared.
The disorders and sickness caused by the too rapid chilling of the unprotected body after sundown, have given rise, I have no doubt, to that erroneous popular prejudice so common among all classes, even those of education and ordinarily good common sense, who imagine there is some peculiar poison or source of unhealthiness in the air at night, that is not contained in the air in the day-time. It will no doubt greatly relieve the minds of these from such "vain terrors," and prove most conclusively the entire fallacy of such reasoning, to examine these tables again. In the copies I have made, I have not classified the results given by day and by night, but a careful examination in detail, fails to show any appreciable difference in the aggregate, by day or by night.
Méné's numerous experiments on the air in Paris, gave less carbonic acid at night than in the day-time.
Lewey's analysis on the Atlantic ocean, one thousand miles from the coast, gave a decided excess in the day over that of the night. He attributes this to the action of the sunlight upon the ocean liberating the gases which it holds in solution.