44
CHOLERA IN INDIA, 1822-32.
European and Native troops in India, amounting to 21 per 1000 of tlie former, and to 10 per 1000 of the latter.
Throughout the early months of the year 1823 cholera was very prevalent in the Presidency, Cuttack, Sylhet, and the Midnapore Divisions ; Beerbhoom and Balasore suffered severely during May.* At Dinapore " the greater number of cases appeared upon a sudden change of the weather ;" but, with these exceptions, we have no evidence of epidemic cholera in or beyond the Delta of the Ganges.
In the Madras Presidency many stations were again entirely free from cholera ;t it broke out here and there, as, for instance, in the 34th Regiment, which was encamped at the Mount near Madras, for the purpose of volunteering preparatory to embarkation for England. " In consequence, apparently, of the excessive heat of the tents, and the great dinnking attending the volun- teering, a high degree of susceptibility to the disease was reproduced among the men, which appeared to be excited into a severe epidemical visitation by a slight change in thb weather. At the same time the disease was not prevaihng in the fixed troops at the station, nor anywhere in the neighbouring country, except in the 54th Regiment, just arrived in India, and in the 53rd on its march. While the disease was prevailing in the 34th, a party of volunteers left it for the depot at Poonamalee, eight miles distant. In the course of a week after their arrival there, twenty cases occurred in that party, but not one in the various other parties of troops previously there, though they were all mixed up together. The 53rd Regiment shortly after under-
- Annesley ' On the Diseases of India,' p. 249. London, 1825.
f Scott's ' Madras Reports.'
