Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 284, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1912 — CURE FOR CHOLERA FOUND [ARTICLE]

CURE FOR CHOLERA FOUND

And With It There Comes a Question of Immense Importance to the Human Race. French physicians in Tunis have found a specific cure for Asiatic cholera. Without going into details unintelligible to the general reader, it seems that the new treatment follows quite closely the lines laid down by Pasteur himself when he discovered the specific for tetanus. -—— That work of this sort could be done in Tunis ‘at all is proof of the remarkable regeneration of the southern shore of the Mediterranean under French control. Yet that is not the most significant thing about this new discovery. Every victory over contagious disease throws upon mankind the responsibility of doing the work formerly done by the defeated plague. Contagious diseases, after all, are rude, crude, unspeakably cruel and unspeakably costly ways of eliminating „the unfit. For their cruelty and their wastefulness, they must be banished; but the physical and mental standards of the race must not be permitted to suffer. >- - It is a perception of that fact which has caused the sudden interest in eugenics; and the sudden breaking forth of laws designed to ke’ep the criminals and the defectives from reproducing their kind. Most of the new laws are crude and ill-fashioned; much of the new science is little more than guesswork; but the tendency is all toward good. It is not too much, even now, to dream of a society in which health shall be as universal as education is today; and be assured mankind will never rest until that dream is made a reality.