10
HISTORY OF CHOLERA IN INDIA.
published at Rome in 1796, gives a curious account of cholera.* He say^ : — " The disease is called mirtirissa, or nircomhen, in the language of Malabar, viszucega in Sanscrit, vulgarly mordexein, and not morte de chien as described by Sonnerat. It is an intestinal' colic caused by the cold wind from the Ghattes, or from bathing in the cold mornings. This disease is frequent in Malabar in Octobei', November, and December, when the wind comes from the Ghattes loaded with particles of nitre ; it is as common on the Coromandel Coast in April and May, and often carries off thirty or forty persons in a village during one night ; for, unless instantly relieved, it destroys life in the course of a few hours. In 1782 the disease hrohe out tvitJi terrible ferocity, and destroyed an enormous number of jpeople^
In the month of May, 1782, cholera was raging in an epidemic form at Trincomale, and our fleet at anchor there was severely affected. M. Sonnerat, f in his ' Travels in India,' also mentions the presence of epidemic cholera along the Coromandel Coast from 1772 to 1781. So that we have independent evidence of the existeiice of this disease in an epidemic form in Bengal during March, 1781, in Madras, and in fact along the whole of the Eastern Coast of India in 1782, and at Hurdwar in the Punjab during the year 1783.
In the foregoing extracts we have, I conceive, distinct evidence, though far from a detailed account, of the first wave of epidemic cholera which passed bver India since the occupation of the country by the English; and it seems that the reason for our not possessing clearer indications of the character of the disease, and of the circimistances attending its outbreak and
- ' Viaggio Alle Indie Oricntali,' p. 350.
t Scott's ' Madras Reports,' p. iv.
