Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/21

 SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. O

(in the Stomach) to take effect, as proved by vomiting, with dronglit of water accompanying it, as if the stomach were parched up, and cramps that fixed m the sinews of the joints and of the flat of the foot, with pain so extreme that the sufferer seemed at point of death ; the eyes dimmed to s.ense, and the nails of the hands and feet black and arched."

In 1563, Gargia d'Orta,* another Portuguese, gives us a vivid description of cholera 3S he met with it at Goa. He says the Arabs called it hachaiza (liaiza), the name it is known by throughout India to this day. He adds that the disease is always most severe in " June and July."

Linschot, a Dutchman, who resided at Goa for some few years prior to 1589, remarks that " the diseases which these changes of the season bring to the inhabit- ants of Goa are several, among which that commonly known as morclexin occurs, which comes on very suddenly to those subject to it, with swelling of the stomach and continual vomiting, till they fall into a faint. This disease is common, and proves deadly to many, t

There seems, therefore, no reason to doubt that epidemic cholera existed in Goa, the only province in India known to Europeans during the sixteenth century, and that its phenomena, and the time of its principal visitations, were precisely similar to those of the,disease as'seen ttere at the present day.

In the seventeenth century we have evidence of the presence of epidemic cholera in BataviaJ (1629), in

view,' 1867, p. 228. t ' Quarterly Review,' 18G7, vol. cxxii, p. 32.
 * Gaskoin " On the Literature of Cholera." ' Medico-Chirurg. Re-

X 'An Account of the Diseases of the East Indies,' p. 26. By Bontius. Translated and published in London.

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