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28

THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OP 1817-21.

The cliolera broke out at Hyderabad towards tlie end of July, and^ at Gooty on tlie 6tli of October ; it visited Bellary on tlie Stli of September, and had declined in severity towards the beginning of October. About the 20th of that month it broke out again with, its former violence among the troops and inhabitants of the town, and did not disappear till November. " Of 600 persons in the jail only one was affected, and he recovered. The jail is situated about twelve hundred yards eastward of the fort, where the disease was very prevalent."

The epidemic appeared at Hurryhur and Chittleedroog in the middle of September, and at Bangalore on the 22nd of October. On the 6th of November it broke out at Seringapatam, which being a "sink of nastiness,"* the mortality among its inhabitants was very great indeed.

3. "We may now trace the course of the cholera of 1818, along the seaboard of the Peninsula of India. From quotations already given from the works of D'Orta, Sonnerat, and Fra Bartolomeo, it is evident that cholera was an endemic disease among the inhabitants of the Malabar and Ooromandel coasts when these authors wrote, and in 1818 Dr. MacRae, from personal observation in those parts since 1790, corroborates their accountf (vide Appendix A). In 1818-19 the mortality from cholera was higher than usual, precisely as it had been in 1782, when Fra Bartolomeo informs us that the disease broke out with increased ferocity and destroyed an enormous number of people.

In the district of Ganjam cholera, as usual, sprung up with renewed energy during the months of March

  • Thornton's ' Gazetteer of India.' London, 1857.

t ' MS. Proceedings of the Bengal Medical Board.'