32
THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OP 1817-21.
out with great violence in tlie Phillipine Islands, principally at Manilla.*
We liear of it throughout the years 1820 and 1821 in China, Batavia, and Java, but it is impossible to trace the epidemic over this vast area, the' information I have on the subject being principally derived from the ' Calcutta Journal ' and other local papers of the period'; in these, frequent references are made to the fearful ravages cholera committed in these parts, but, in a scientific point of view, they are often silent on the most important circumstances of the epidemic.
We may now briefly trace the course which the cholera of 1817-18-19-20 followed to the west of India, noticing its appearance in Persia in 1821. I have already shown that we have ample evidence to prove the existence of epidemic cholera on the western border of India throughout the years 1819 and 1820.
Mr. Fraser arrived at Muscat on the 8th of July, 1821, and he remarks that, during a visit the Imaum paid the envoy, "he confirmed a report which had before reached us of the epidemic cholera having visited Muscat, whei^e it had committed considerable ravages. His Highness informed us that he had lost by the disease at least ten thousand of his subjects ; that Muscat had by no means sufiered most, as if had ex- tended over the greater part of Omaun." " It had broken out spontaneously, first at Rooee, a village three or four miles from Muttra, without any known means by which contagion could have been conveyed. A ship with slaves from Zanguebar, which had lost a number on the passage, had, it is true, come to Muscat, but not until after the disease had appeared there."t
- ' Calcutta Journal ' for 1820.
t ' Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan in 1821 and 1822,' p. 21. By J. B. Fraser. London, 1825.
