When the cholera is near one cannot be too scrupulously clean. The fingers must be carefully washed with antiseptic before a meal, and everything purified by heat only a few moments before being put into the mouth, since flies and careless handling may soil food or anything else exposed in a cool condition even for a few minutes. It is best when cholera is actually present in the house or town in which you live to swallow nothing which has been allowed to get cool; everything should be heated and eaten when hot. Mephistopheles, in Goethe’s _Faust_, complains of the swarming, pullulating life on the earth. He—the great destroyer—says: “How many have I sent to grass! Yet young, fresh blood, do what I will Keeps ever circulating still. In water, in the earth, in air, In wet, dry, cold—everywhere Germs without number are unfurl’d, And but for fire, and fire alone, There would be nothing in the world That I could truly call my own.” The version is Sir Theodore Martin’s. Mephistopheles might be a bacteriologist explaining the difficulty of dealing with disease germs. In any case, it is the Mephistophelian spirit of annihilation, and flame as its instrument, which man brings to his service in the contest with cholera germs. The great carriers of cholera are human beings themselves travelling in caravans, pilgrimages, shiploads. For the fact has now been established that a man may harbour inside him the cholera-bacillus without its multiplying largely or rendering him seriously ill. Once it is brought by such an individual into a favourable locality, it is spread by water contaminated by him, and yet used for drink and domestic purposes; and also it is spread by his touching things in which the bacillus can grow, such as cooked food, fruits, etc., swallowed subsequently by unsuspecting purchasers or employers. You have, in order to avoid cholera (and similar infections), not only to have very clean fingers yourself, but to see to it that your servants’ fingers are clean also, or else that anything they touch is afterwards heated for a few minutes to near boiling-point before you let it enter your mouth. A little history illustrative of the need of this precaution is on record. In Egypt during a recent outbreak of cholera there was a very wealthy lady who lived alone in an isolated palace under the charge of a physician. She had a delicate appetite; her food was most carefully prepared. She drank and used only boiled sterilised water; no one was allowed to approach her except her servants, who never left the palace grounds, and were in good health. She sickened of cholera and died. It was a puzzle as to how she had acquired the infection. Her physician at last discovered that she daily partook of cold chicken-broth, prepared carefully by her cook. The cook, though practically well, was found to be infected with the cholera-bacillus, which had probably lodged in his