My first trials in 1880 were rather encouraging, and I felt
myself justified in engaging some proprietors and the association of our
southern railroads to repeat the experiments on a large scale the
following year, recommending them, however, to use arsenic in a solid form
as offering an easy and certain dosage. This extensive prophylactic
experiment began in 1881, and acquired constantly increasing proportions
in 1882 and 1883, which have become still larger this year. An experiment
of this kind is not easy to conduct in the beginning. The name, arsenic,
frightens not only those whom we desire to submit to its action, but also
the physicians, whose exaggerated fears have sometimes rendered the
experiments of no avail, since they were conducted too timidly and the
doses of arsenic employed were altogether insufficient. But some
intelligent men, especially M. Ricchi, physician in chief to the southern
railroads, were able speedily to triumph over these obstacles, and to
place the experiment on a firm basis. The general testimony of all the
facts which they have collected tends really to prove that when the
administration of arsenic is begun some weeks before the presumed season
for the appearance of the fever, and when it is continued regularly
throughout the whole of this season, the power of resistance of the human
organism to malaria is increased.
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