Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/19

 EARLY EECOEDS — SANSKEET GEEEK.

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of tlie senses, coldness of the body, sunken eyes, suppressed voice, a feeling of complete lassitude but "if burning of the palms of the hands and body, accompanied with sharp vomiting," occur, the patient is hkely to recover ; and should " he digest his food, all danger is passed," the patient obtaining immediate reHef, the purging stops, and he is in comfort. If this description refers to cholera, the disease must have been in existence for many centuries, Susruta being mentioned in the Mahabarata, which was com- piled before the Christian era. These Hindu authori- ties hved and wrote in the North-Western Provinces of India, and it is remarkable that they describe Vishuka as being a sporadic affection, — a character it has retained up to the present time in the north- west, with the exception of waves of the disease which burst over the country from time to time.

Hippocrates,* Galen, and Whang-shoohof are wit- nesses to the existence of cholera in their* day, both in Europe and China, and their evidence is supported by a series of Grecian, Eoman, and Arabian authors, bearing record to the fact of the pre'sence of the disease in the various countries in which they lived. J

The hterature of the middle ages is singularly barren in original observations regarding the science of medi- cine. Men occupied themselves rather with the ancient terms of art than with actual observation, and, in their critical researches, entirely overlooked

Francofurti, a.d. 1624.
 * ' Hippocrates Coi, de morb. vul,,' lib. v, sec. vii, fol. 1144, ed. fol.,

t ' Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society, Calcutta ' vol i p. 204.

X Celsua A. C, 'De Medicina,' lib. iv, cap. xi; Alexander Trallianus, ' De Cholera,' cap. xvi. Aretajus, lib. ii, cap. v. Ccelius AureUanus, Hb. iii, cap. XX. Avicenna, p. 492, edit. Rome, 1593.