"after the old Roman fashion," only that in this case it was marked "Cholera dose."

Among the native population, superstition arrayed itself in its most disgusting and debasing attributes: religious ceremonies, rather as magical incantations than in the spirit of devotion, were everywhere resorted to.

In the cantonment at Seroor, forty miles north-east of Poonah, and the old head-quarters of the Bombay Dekkan division, the very outbreaking of the disease was accompanied with a singular circumstance of the above character. A female, declaring herself to be an Avatar of the fiend of pestilence, entered the bazaar or market street. She was almost naked; but her dishevelled hair, her whole body, and her scanty apparel, were daubed and clotted with the dingy red and ochry yellow powder of the Hindoo burial ceremonies. She was frantic with mania, real or assumed, or maddened by an intoxication partly mental, partly from excitement from drugs. In one hand she held a drawn sword, in the other an earthen vessel containing fire, (the one probably a symbol of destruction, the other of the funeral pile.) Before her proceeded a gang of musicians, pouring forth their discords from every harsh and clattering instrument of music appropriate to their religious processions. Behind her followed a long line of empty carts; no driver whom she encountered on the road daring to disobey her command to follow in her train. Thus accoutred and accompanied, her phrenzy seemed beyond all human control; and as she bounded along, she denounced certain destruction to all who did not immediately acknowledge her divinity; and, pointing to the empty carts which followed, proclaimed that they were brought to convey away the corpses of those who rashly persisted in infidelity. No ridicule, no jest, awaited this frantic visitant, but deep distress and general consternation. The outcry and clamour of alarm were not long in reaching the officers on duty; and the goddess was instantly apprehended and confined, and her mob of followers dispersed. But unfortunately she was no sooner secured, than she herself was attacked by the disease; and being less cautiously observed when under its influence, she contrived to escape, and was never afterwards heard of. Whence she came, or whither she went, remained a mystery; and this detestable delusion had a serious effect on the feelings of the mob.'

The origin of so terrible a malady is lost in obscurity. The Indian physicians have found records which would seem to attest its existence at very remote periods. But this is certain, that, before the month of August, 1817, it never attracted public attention as it has since done; and a succinct account of the progress of the malady, since 1817, in the Indian Peninsula will suffice to conduct us to that point of the narrative which is of more immediate interest and more direct utility to our argument.

In the month of August, 1817, (says Dr Hawkins, p. 168,) at Jes

sore,

sore, about a hundred miles to the north-east of Calcutta, the pestilence arose; spreading from village to village, and destroying thousands of the inhabitants, it reached Calcutta early in September. It extended thence into Behar; depopulating many large cities, until the inhabitants fled to other spots. Benares, Allahabad, Goruckpore, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Delhi, Agra, Muttra, Meerat, and Bareilly, all suffered in succession; and it is remarkable, that it did not appear in these districts at the same time, but leaving one, it soon showed itself in another. At length it appeared in the grand army, first at Mundellah, then in the Jubbulpore and Sauger districts. From thence it spread to Nagpore, and continued its course over the Deccan in a violent degree. At Hussingabad its ravages were terrible for several days; and taking its course all along the banks of the Nerbuddah, it reached Tannah. Visiting the noted cities of Aurungabad and Ahmednugger, it spread to Poonah; from thence to Panwell, in the direction of the coast, where it extended to the north and south, reaching Salsette, and arrived at Bombay in the second week of September, 1818, one year after its first appearance at Calcutta.

While this was passing in the east of the peninsula, the epidemic was making the like progress to the south, progressively spreading along the whole Coromandel coast. It arrived at Madras in October,

1818.'

It appeared in the centre division of the field-army in the middle of November, and finally withdrew in the first days of December, having destroyed within twelve days, by the lowest statement, three thousand men out of ten thousand. Some have estimated the loss at five thousand-others even at eight thousand. The following is from the Bengal report :

After creeping about, in its wonted insidious manner for several days among the camp-followers, it, as it were, in an instant gained fresh vigour, and at once burst forth with irresistible violence in every direction. Old and young, Europeans and natives, fighting men and camp-followers, were alike subject to its visitations, and all equally sank in a few hours under its grasp. From the 14th to the 22d the mortality had become so great as to depress the stoutest spirits. The sick were already so numerous, and still pouring in from every quarter so quickly, that the medical men, although day and night at their post, were no longer able to administer to their necessities. The whole camp then put on the appearance of an hospital. The noise and bustle almost inseparable from the intercourse of large bodies of people had nearly subsided; nothing was to be seen but individuals anxiously hurrying from one division of the camp to another, to inquire after the fate of their dead or dying companions, and melancholy groups of natives bearing the biers of their departed relatives to the river. At length even this consolation was denied them; for the mortality became so great, that there were neither time nor hands to carry off the bodies, which were then thrown into the neighbouring ravine, or hastily committed to the earth on the spot on which they had expired, and even round the officers' tents. All business had given way to solicitude for the suffering. Not a smile could be discerned, not a sound heard, except the groans of the dying and the wailing over the dead. Throughout the night especially, a gloomy silence, interrupted only by the well-known dreadful sounds of poor wretches labouring under the distinguishing symptoms of the disease, universally prevailed. Many of the sick died before reaching the hospital; and even their comrades, whilst bearing them from the outposts to medical aid, sank themselves, suddenly seized by the disorder. The natives, thinking their only safety lay in flight, had now begun to desert in great numbers; and the highways and fields for many miles round were strewed with the bodies of those who had left the camp with the disease upon them, and speedily sank under its exhausting effects.'

After

After the cholera had thus ravaged the peninsula of India to its uttermost verge of Cape Comorin, it attacked the island of Ceylon, in the month of January, 1819. 'Its progress along the coast of Coromandel,' says Deputy-Inspector Farrell, excited apprehensions in Ceylon; and it must be allowed that the first alarm raised by its appearance in this country was in the province of Jaffna, which lies opposite the places on the continent of India where it was committing great ravages at the time. Very shortly after we heard of its appearance at Jaffna, a well-marked case of it occurred at Colombo, in a soldier of the 83d regiment, and it soon after manifested itself in different parts of the island.'Madras Government Gazette, Feb. 1, 1821.

*

The circumstances under which the disease appeared in the isles of France and Bourbon are curious, and demand a strict investigation. The Topaze frigate left Ceylon for Port Louis in the Mauritius, where she arrived on the 29th October, 1819. During the voyage the cholera broke out among her crew, of whom many died. At the time of her arrival there were no examples of the disease on board; nevertheless, three weeks after the convalescent were landed, the cholera attacked the inhabitants of Port Louis. 6 Its virulence' (says M. de Jonnès) was such, that healthy and robust persons were seized in the streets with convulsive cholic, and fell dead almost at the instant of attack.' The mortality is stated by Mr. Combleholme, an eye-witness, as amounting to 20,000 in the course of six weeks, or nearly one-fourth of the population. Sir Robert Farquhar, the governor, however stated it in Parliament as only 7000, or nearly one-twelfth.†

Such

*I have the surgeon of the frigate's authority, as well as personal observation, in stating, that not one of those patients laboured under symptoms of cholera at the time of disembarkation; but it should not be concealed, that a medical officer, who had gone on board the same forenoon, saw one man affected with severe vomiting and spasms.' Extracted from a Report to the Army Medical Board, by John Kinnis, M.D., dated from Port Louis, 31st March, 1820.

†M. de Jonnès, p. 130 and 248.-There are three considerations which may pos sibly be urged in favour of those who deny that the cholera was introduced into the Isle of France by the Topaze. The first is, that there was no case of cholera on board the frigate at the time of her arrival. The second is, that three weeks elapsed between the arrival of the vessel and the appearance of the malady. The third is, that the crew of the Topaze remained free from the disease, though they had unreserved communication with the shore, and with the ships in the harbour, where cholera was raging. As to the first, it is evident, that in the case of the Topaze, cholera must have been communicated by the medium of some inanimate substance, to which the morbific exhalations of the sick had adhered. Are we to believe, that a ship, in which so many had died, was incapable of retaining the virus in it, either in the vestments of the dead, the substances with which the sick had been in contact, or the places in which they had breathed their last? Can it be proved that no slave or servant was exposed to the action of a poison thus preserved? The fact stands fairly and clearly out, that an infected ship did arrive at a healthy port, and communicated with it, and that shortly after such communication, the identical malady which had

existed

Such are the circumstances under which the cholera appeared at the Mauritius. They are strongly contrasted with those under which

a

existed in the vessel, broke out for the first time among the inhabitants of the port town. It is in vain to urge, that many who went on board the frigate escaped infection. Many always escape every epidemic; and were this not so ordered, the world would long ere this have been depopulated by small-pox and other pestilences. The second objection amounts to this-that three weeks having elapsed between the the arrival of the Topaze and the appearance of the cholera in Port Louis, the two events ought not to be regarded as cause and effect. This confident assertion relies on a supposed accuracy of knowledge, which we possess neither with regard to the laws of cholera, nor those of any other contagious malady. It supposes, 1. that persons who went on board the frigate on her arrival, were immediately exposed to the influence of the morbid poison; 2. that they stayed sufficiently long within its sphere of action to have made it impossible for them to have escaped infection; 3. that the disease could not lie latent in such persons for so long a period as three weeks. In refutation of this last point, we shall be enabled, in our narrative of the progress of cholera in Russia, to bring forward three instances, in two of which it is proved that the cholera did not break out in the individuals till more than a fortnight had elapsed from the time they had been exposed to contagion; and in the third, it will be shown that individuals carried the seeds of the malady about with them for twenty-five days, and communicated the disease to others. In the interim we shall endeavour to prove, from the analogy of small-pox, that many circumstances may occur to account for the delay in the case of the Topaze. In the first place, we find, in cases of inoculation in which we know the exact moment when the individuals have been sufficiently exposed to the action of the small-pox poison, that a certain number do not become infected at all; that others exhibit symptoms of the disease in six days, and others not till the fourteenth or fifteenth. This was the result of the experience of one of the most extensive inoculators of the last century, Baron Dimsdale. When the small-pox is caught casually, by inhalation or some other means, the period which elapses between exposure to the malady and its appearance is found to be still longer, and to vary from eighteen to twenty-five days. Dr. Patrick Russell, whose situation of physician to the British factory at Aleppo gave him opportunities of collecting the valuable materials which he has embodied in an admirable treatise on the plague, says, p. 303, 'From what I observed at Aleppo, I was inclined to think the infection (viz. the plague) rarely lies latent beyond ten days, but wider experience is necessary to determine a matter of so much importance. From a consideration of these and similar facts, it is acknowledged that the constitution of a patient modifies the action of a poison, and that, in those examples in which we know the exact moment at which the person became infected, it is impossible to tell, except generally, when he will exhibit the characteristics of the peculiar disease. If there is so much uncertainty when we possess one fixed point to start from, how much more complicated and uncertain does the investigation become when we have no accurate data to guide us; when we neither know the constitutions of those supposed to have been exposed to a contagious malady, nor the precise time when they imbibed the poison!

The circumstances which hinder or delay the communication of a contagious malady are very various, and often inappreciable; so that what appears to be sufficient exposure, turns out to be the reverse. A striking illustration of this is furnished by Dr. Haygarth. Being desirous to ascertain the period at which small-pox appeared after the exposure of a patient to the action of its poison, he collected thirty-seven cases

which

a Two persons left Orenburg, at which city cholera was prevalent, and arrived at Uralsk, in which it did not exist. They performed a quarantine of fourteen days at this last place; after which it would appear, from Sokoloff's report, they became the victims of the malady.—Lichtenstädt, p. 127.

which this malady was introduced into the neighbouring Isle of Bourbon. Baron Milius, the French governor of this colony, established the strictest quarantine regulations immediately on hearing the fate of the Isle of France. In spite of these precautions, we have the authority of the Madras Gazette, June 8, 1820, and the correspondence of the governor, Milius, himself, for

'The

which occurred when this disease was epidemical at Chester, in the year 1774. individuals affected were selected,' he says, ' from the children of the poorest families, among whom the intercourse was very intimate, living in the same room, and generally lying in the same bed, and not kept at a distance by any fear either of their parents or themselves.' Whenever the small-pox attacked one of a family, he noted the time of its appearance in the rest, and found that, out of these thirty-seven cases, some of the individuals were attacked as early as the third, seventh, and eighth days; four were seized on the eleventh; two on the twelfth; six on the fifteenth; and seven on the eighteenth; one patient was not attacked till the twenty-first day, two till the twenty-second, and one till the twenty-third. In these last four examples of close intimacy, and apparently sufficient exposure, the Doctor supposes the children not to have become infected till the seventh, eighth, and ninth days; that they then received the contagion, which lay latent for the usual term, in this malady, of twelve days, before the eruptive fever commenced. Let the circumstances under which these children were exposed to a disease confessedly far more infectious than cholera, be compared with those which accompanied the introduction of this latter malady into the Mauritius, and the objection as to length of time will cease to exist. If children can be exposed constantly, day and night, to the full effects of small-pox at its acme of virulence, and yet escape for eight or nine days, is there any improbability in supposing that the casual visiters of the Topaze might have escaped the contamination for a similar period of a poison which was possibly concealed a part of this time in some obscure corner of a trunk or bale of goods, or which gave out its pernicious exhalation in a part of the vessel to which they rarely descended? Allowing, then, eight or ten days to elapse before any one became infected, and a week before the symptoms declared themselves, the difficulty founded on the interval of twenty days between the arrival of the Topaze, and the appearance of cholera in Port Louis, vanishes.

The third objection, founded on the immunity of the crew of the Topaze during the whole time the epidemic was raging around them, is easily answered. In the first place, they who are willing to believe that the cholera was not communicated by contagion, but depended for its cause on some general atmospheric change, must account for the escape of those on board the frigate who were day and night in the same air, which, on their hypothesis, was infecting the people on shore, and those on board the rest of the ships in the harbour. But not to stop at this point. It is a constant phenomenon of all contagious epidemics, that the malady only rages for a time in one place, and that they who have lived through the term of its visitation, may afterwards have communication with infected persons or places without much risk. When the same army, which, under the Marquis of Hastings, had a little before been so dreadfully ravaged by cholera, was once again subjected to its influence, it was observed that the malady was principally confined to the fresh levies-those who had witnessed the first epidemic escaping.-(Bengal Report.) In the history of the plague, no observation is commoner than the one, that after it has ceased to affect the inhabitants of a city, it seizes on the strangers who come into it from the country, so that they who have been exposed to the influence of a contagious malady, possess or acquire a privilege of immunity which is denied to those who have not. The sailors of the frigate come under the former predicament-the ill-fated inhabitants of Port Louis under the latter-or the Topaze, with its crew, may be looked on as a village in which the cholera had swept off all who were peculiarly susceptible of the malady, and under this view we are only witnessing, on the ocean, with regard to this ship, that which was abundantly evident among the hamlets of Hindostan.

stating