§ SIR JERVOISE JERVOISEsaid, he rose to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, Whether the attention of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council has been directed to a statement in The Morning Star of 25th October, 1865, that the Emperor and Empress of the French had visited the Cholera Hospitals in Paris, and that M. Gustave Girard had made experiments in demonstration of the non-infectious nature of the cholera?
MR. H. A. BRUCEsaid, in reply, that the Medical Officer of the Privy Council was cognizant of the conduct of the illustrious personages in question, whose courage and humanity on that occasion had excited such general admiration. He was also aware of the daring experiments made by M. Girard, to prove the non-infectious nature of cholera. That gentleman had placed upon his tongue the moisture from the brow and the fur from the tongue of a man who had died of cholera without suffering any ill consequences. But, in the first place, such an experiment only proved the insusceptibility to that disease of M. Girard, and by no means proved that the experiment might be tried with equal 1645 safety by other persons. Even, if held conclusive on that point, it did not in the slightest measure invalidate the position taken by the Medical Officer of the Privy Council with respect to the infectiousness of that disease. The hon. Baronet had, moreover, overlooked the fact that, as the French Government was at present strongly advocating quarantine precautions against the introduction of cholera, it might be presumed that their medical advisers entertained the same opinion as the medical adviser of the English Government on the subject of M. Girard's experiments.