- Cholera : Mode of Propagation, Healing and Prevention - "Cholera is an infectious disease. By infectious diseases are meant those diseases which are caused by the reception from without of specific infective material into healthy bodies, which material acts like a poison. To the list of infectious disorders belong such different maladies as small-pox and intermittent fever. Infective material differs essentially from lifeless chemical poison in being composed of the smallest possible units of living matter which when taken into healthy bodies rapidly increase and multiply under certain conditions and by their life-growth disturb the health of the body..."