SIR,--Having read all the letters that have appeared in the papers
suggesting a treatment for the prevailing epidemic, I have got, perhaps,
a little confused; but, on the whole, the following is the course, as
far as I can make out, that it would be prudent to pursue on finding
oneself threatened with any of the well-known symptoms. Immediately get
into a warm bath several degrees hotter than you can possibly bear it,
then get out again. Now go to bed, send for your family solicitor, and
make your will, meantime trying every half hour half a tumbler or so of
any patent medicine the advertisement of which occurs to you. Call in a
homoeopathic doctor, and give his system a turn for four-and-twenty
hours; then send for your own medical man. Take care that they do not
meet on the stairs. Take anything and everything he gives you for the
next eight-and-forty hours, interspersing his prescriptions with
frequent tumblers of hot and steaming ammoniated quinine-and-water,
getting down at the same time more beef tea, oysters, champagne,
muffins, mince-pies, oranges, nuts, and whiskey than, under ordinary
circumstances, you feel would be good for you. Continue the above
treatment for a couple of months. This is what I am going to try, if I
am down with it. As I said above, it is, if a little complicated, sure
to be all right, for I have got every item of it from a careful perusal
of those infallible guides and directors in all modern difficulties and
doubts,