MASKED IGNORANCE.
EVERY age has its general specific and universal agent, to the efficacy or activity of which all maladies are to yield, or all effects are to be attributed. The less that is known of the cause the greater is its potency, and the imagination works cures that tend to accredit the nostrum of the day. When electricity was emerging from darkness into science, its extraordinary effects as- tounded the philosophers of that time even more than they now startle the ignorant, and it was not long before the agency of the newly-evolved power was applied to cure all the ills that flesh is heir to ' - though it must be confessed, with less success than such an efficient stimulator of the nerves had promised. We have heard men with considerable pretensions to scientific knowledge maintain that the lungs are a galvanic battery, wherein is generated the power that discharges all the animal functions ; and Professor Faraday, the great apostle of electrical science, attributes vital energy to the same universal agent ; re- specting the nature of which, however, he has publicly declared himself to be totally ignorant. Here, then, is an agent suf- ficiently energetic to fulfil all the requirements of a general spe- cific, and sufficiently mysterious to be assigned by pompous igno- rance as a cause for all unknown pha3nomena. A plague arises in the East, passes over and desolates Europe, crosses the Atlantic to find victims in America, and sets medical science at nought in .detecting the source of the poison or in combating its effects. To avoid the admission of ignorance, the universal agent electricity is called in aid, and we are told that the cholera is owing to a peculiar electrical state of the atmosphere. With this amount of information we are expected to be satisfied ; though what is meant by an "electrical state of the atmosphere," -the " profession" is entirely ignorant. A few weeks since, a letter from a French savant was published in the newspapers, mentioning some experiments with an electrical machine during the prevalence of cholera in Paris. This philosopher stated, that the apparatus refused to exhibit any signs of electricity when the cholera was at its worst; but as the disease diminished, the elec- trical machine again eliminated sparks, which became stronger or weaker as the virulence of the cholera fluctuated. So cer- tain was he of the accuracy of this indicator, that, without reference to the reported cases, be could tell by a few turns of the machine the state of the public health. Assuming, therefore—though, according to the best authorities in such mat- ters, without foundation—the electricity of the machine to be pupplied from the atmosphere, the French philosopher jumped to the conclusion that the cholera is caused by the absence of atmo- spherical electricity, and that electricity is the grand specific against the scourge. Influenced by this opinion, many persons set about insulating themselves in the best manner they could, to keep in the stock of electricity they possessed, as the best pre- aervative of life. It would be well for those who have faith in this specific to be informed, on the authority of Faraday, that the end of a piece of zinc wire will generate as much electricity as is contained in a flash of lightning ; and that one of Dr. Wollaston's thimble galvanic batteries will furnish more of the electric fluid than is exhibited during a vio- lent thunder-storm. With this battery in their pocket, and in- sulated on a glass stool, such persons may consider themselves as impregnable against assault as the rock of Gibraltar. But, un- fortunately for this hypothesis, we have recently had thunder- storms "to clear the air," and to dissipate the cholera, if it could be driven away by the presence:of atmospherical electricity ; yet no sensible impression has been made on the invading enemy. The sceptical, indeed, begin to think that the facts of the French- man may be as questionable as his inferences, and that the results he reported were owing rather to a defect in his apparatus than to a deficiency in the electric supply. We would not be supposed to question, that an agent which seems to exert an all-pervading influence throughout nature may be in some way concerned in the production of the chelera poison ; but the operations of electricity being so universal and so varied, it adds nothing to our knowledge of the cause of cholera to affirm that it is occasioned by the electrical state of the atmosphere. Some more special cause of the disease is required ; and an efficient Board of Public Health, acting on the principles we have else- where indicated, would remove the question from the domain of speculation and empiricism, and bring it within the bounds of scientific truth. In the mean time, it is to be feared, that by endeavouring to mask ignorance by electricity, research after the specific cause and the specific cure may be prevented.
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