the important events that were passing before their eyes;[1] and this is precisely what is even now going on among Hindus and Mahammedans in India: the Baids and Hakims pore over their ancient works with the greatest avidity, but are utterly blind to the necessity of noticing what is passing around them. Consequently, we have but few records in Persian or other Oriental languages to enlighten us on the history of the diseases of India.[2] Otherwise there can be little doubt we should have had evidence of waves of epidemic cholera extending over the length and breadth of the country, long prior to the time of our occupying it.
The earliest notice of the existence of cholera in Hindustan, from the pen of a European, occurs in the 'Lendas' da India ' by Gaspar Correa, a Portuguese. He says that, during the spring of the year 1503, 20,000 men had died in the army of the Zamoryn Sovereign of Calicut, the enemy of the King of Cochin, and that the cause of this mortality was enhanced " by the current spring diseases, and also smallpox, besides which there was another disease, sudden-like, which struck with pain in the belly, so that a man did not last out eight hours' time.[3]
The same author informs us that in the spring of 1543 he met with cholera in an epidemic form at Goa; that the natives called it moryxy, and that the mortality was so great that it was with difficulty the dead could be buried; "so grievous was the throe, and of so bad a sort, that the very worst kind of poison seemed there
