Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/23

 ENGLISH NOTICES, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

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they had a perfect right to follow Cullen's nosology, and class cholera under the heading of spasmodic diseases if they pleased ; but, supposing this were the case, we can hardly be surprised at failing to meet with a desG*ription of this affection as cholera among the writings of English physicians in India, during the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.

In 1774 Dr. Paisley writes I am happy to hear you have occasioned the army to change its ground, for there can be no doubt, from the circum- stances you have mentioned, that their situation contributed to the frequency and violence of the attacks of this dangerous disease, which, as you have observed, is true cholera morbus, the same they had at Trincomale." (In a footnote Dr. Ci^rtis remarks that this must refer to some' occasion long anterior to the war of 1782.) Dr. Paisley goes on to observe that it is often epidemic among the nativest " In the first campaign made m this country, the same disease was terribly fatal among them, and fifty Europeans of the line were seized with it. I have niet with many single cases since." In 1770 cholera was endemic among the natives in the Amboo Valley in Arcot, and throughout the Travancore country. f

In 1781 we find cholera prevalent during the month of March in the district of Ganjam.* It attacked a division Of some 5000 Bengal troops marching 'through that province under Colonel Pearse. He reports that, besides those who died, no less than five hundred men were admitted into hospital on the 22nd of March.

Surgeon to the " Medea " frigate. Edinburgh, 1807, p. 85, t Idem, p. 16.
 * 'An Account of the Diseases of IncHii.' By 0. Curtis, formerly