As regards the cholera vibrio that could survive in water and environment, they are submitted to a rigorous control by the Health Ministry's competent departments.
At the same time, she recognizes cholera as a biological phenomenon, as defined and analyzed by modern bacteriology and epidemiology, and wishes to accord it a status as an independent historical agency; she at least implies that French social history would have been recognizably different if the cholera vibrio had not arrived on French soil.