Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1885-08-28
CHOLERA INOCULATION.
4 Green Mountain Yankee Agitating the
Medical Fraternity.
From the y. Y. start


Some eight or ten years ago there mat
circulated at the Albany medical college Il
middle aged medical practitioner, haling
from the back woods of Vermont. His
name was Nichols, and he was IA typical
NermOnter, tall, ungainly and awkward,
with unCouth manners and Enthusiastically
rural appearance he attracted attention
by his pecularities, and was the butt for
many Il good naturcd joke from the stu
dents. He wanted Il diploma, though he
had carried saddle bags for several wears.
and there was no closer, hard working
man in the class. But he knew more
about practical medicine than he did about
theory, and IA formal examination invari-
ably hoored him. He was candidate for
graduation two or three tim !uI on
every trial he was plucked, ana III 1850 he
left finally. DR.. Jacob :. MoSher remark
ed that Nichols would yet be heard from,
and DIR. j. NJ. Bigelow encouraged MIN to
again return. But the Nermonters means
were at low discount, and he disap-
peared.
Mr.. Almquist was struck with the i'm
preston that the incubator at Alcra had
Il Yankee look about him. When he left
the section of the hospital there, the opera.
tor asked ii he was not an American. Re
ceiVlng that assurance, the assistant said
CURLY, IF you are ever in Albany, n y
you might mention to the college faculty
that ". j. Nichols is getting along in the
world
The visitor did not have any reason for
understanding the mans meaning, but he
thought at the moment that there was Il
flavor of wooden nutmegs somewhere in
the air. He did not wait to analyZe the
atmosphere, but hurried to his hotel. Dr.
ferran had refused to part with his Sc
cret Tor love or money, and the visitor
hastened to get where he could extract
from his arm some of the matter that DR..
| PAUL. had jabbed under the skin, thus
to arrive at some idea of what the ccle-
brated culture fluid" really consists. lie
succeeded in obtaining Il bit of the sub
stance, but the cholera mcrObe is Il lively
/ little beast, and not ore of his kind was
to be found III the so called fluid. To the
Investigators horror this demonstration
was arrived at, and he believed that the
bacillus had entered the blood, rendering
him subject of the attenuated form OF
cholera. Instead of catching the microbes
he felt they had caught him.
But he waited in vain for the malady.
/ for 1t never came. lie however, took an
other look at the substance that had been
| introduced into his arm, and which still
remained on the slide of the microscope
The wooden nutmegs We're in hand sure
ly The substance on the slide was
composed of croton oil and eaterium
only these drugs and nothing more
DIR, BegelO, in the course of his lectures
on "Materia Medica and Therapeutics had
each year in treating of cathartcs men
/ toned to the class the curious fact that
croton oil upon entering the blood viii
produce all the objective phenomena OF
Asatic cholera, and that one of the re
suits of the use of elaterum is procuring
discharges almost precisely like the char
acteristic rice water discharges of the
same dread disease. 1t may not be true
| that the student Nichols caught ON this
single propensity of the two drugs, and i,
making big capital out OF it.
But the reported remark of Or. Pauli's
and the other peculiar features in the case
make it look as if a cute Yankee had
/ foisted gigantic humbug on the Spanish
credulity. 1t may not be Nichols, and the
cathartics may be used only to keep the
microbes in order; but take it all in all
the humbug is a clever one.-N. y. star