356

THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

the sailors and those who go down to the sea in ships should be first attacked. Many foreigners fell victims, whose names never will be known, and whose friends will vainly wait for tidings from and of the lost ones. Curiously enough, my sister was recently asked by a German woman, whom she met in an English country town, whether she could give her any news of a sister who had been lost sight of during the Hamburg epidemic, and who, it was feared, must have shared the common fate. It was by no means unusual for whole families to be taken to the same hospital and distributed in the various wards according to sex and accommodation. Spacious and roomy as these wards were, their capacity was tried to the utmost, the beds, of necessity, being so close that the patients might almost have joined hands round the circumference of the ward. Had not the ventilating and sanitary arrangements been almost perfect, a very serious condition of things would have arisen. The stone floors admirably lent themselves to assidious deluging and mopping with suitable disinfectants. Thus the career of the germ was early cut off.

The appearance of the cholera patient is typical and unlike that of one suffering from any other disease. He is collapsed, with a dusky blackness of skin in many cases, giving the suggestion that his body has been thickly powdered with coal-dust. The normal lines are blackened and deepened, the expression haggard and wan. List­lessness and apathy are expressed in every attitude, and the mental condition, unless the case be complicated with delirium, is distinctly one of lethargy. The rapid emacia­tion of the body through the draining of the tissue fluids is characteristic only of chol­era, and is noticeable in all severe cases. It gives an aged, withered look to the patient, and even the dimpled, rounded limbs of the young child will lose contour, and become wrinkled and shrunk in the space of a few hours. A consuming thirst is so great as to almost absorb all other sensations, and results in the enormous consumption of liquids and in part restores the loss of the fluid components of the body through the disease. This thirst is constant and unrelievable, and was one of the difficulties of the situation. Hard pressed as we were to supply the bare needs of our patients, it was most pathetic to be frequently obliged to ignore for a space their entreaties for drink of any and every kind, and to note the wistful, thirsty eyes of the occupants as we passed their beds to supply some one whose needs were greater. The tight clutch of baby hands on mugs and glasses told us how real was the desire for liquid. Often in the midst of our duties we would hear a small thud on the ground, followed by patter of little feet that scarcely knew how to w 7 alk, setting out on a small voyage of discovery and investigation into the contents of bottles and jugs that stood in the wards. It has been said that a large proportion of cholera patients die of fear, but I believe this conclusion to have been reached from observations made in India. Doubtless the nervous, highly-strung Hin­doo would see in the invasion of cholera the finger of fate, against which he would believe medical skill to be quite powerless, but the phlegmatic Teuton gave no evi­dence of a belief in an unassailable Kismet. It frequently occurred to us that the choleraic condition killed all natural emotion. Little sisters side by side in bed, one would die, and the other would take no notice and feel no fear. Older children would see their mothers carried dead from the wards, and would watch the procession as of something afar off that had no relation to them. The rapid succession of patients was most bewildering—not, unfortunately, because of recovery, but because of deaths. Almost before we had time to know the faces of our patients they were removed to the mortuary, and others w r ere ready to take the vacant beds. Cholera spares neither sex nor age. Our patients ranged from the baby at the breast to those who had fulfilled their three-score years and ten. The fight was by no means always to the strong, and victory not at all necessarily to those of robust nature. Treatment consisted chiefly of venous injections of warm salt and water, combined with hot, stimulating baths and packs, but the general consensus of medical opinion at Hamburg was that no remedy could in any sense.be relied on. Our own experience bears out that which has been aptly said regarding the disease, that “ if the patient be strong enough, or can in any way be assisted to survive the attack, it might be said he w T as cured of cholera, but it