Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/27

 CLOSE OP THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

11

progress, is to be found in the fact, that it was hardly recognised as cholera. Moreover, it was not till 1786 that the Hospital Board was estabhshed in Bengal and Madras, before which period no returns of the sick were made. • Mr. Scott adds, that the reports from that date up to 1802 were kept in.no regular order. Our possessions in India also, prior to 1781, were surrounded by vast areas of unsubjected country, beyond which the course of the epidemic could not possibly be traced; but the details above given are, nevertheless, important, as evidence of the passage of a wave of epidemic cholera over a considerable portion of Hindustan within twenty- four years of the battle of Plassey.

During the month of October, 1787, epidemic cholera committed terrible ravages at -Arcot, and Yellore. With regard to this outbreak, Mr. Davis, a member of the Madras Hospital Board, remarks : — " I found in what was called the Epidemic Hospital, three different diseases, viz., patients labouring under cholera morbus ; an inflammatory fever with universal cramps ; and a spasmodic affection of the nervous s't^stem, distinct from cholera morbus. I understood, from the Regi- mental Surgeon, that the last disease had proved fatal to all who had been attacked with it, and that he had already lost twenty-seven men of the regiment in a few days. Five patients were then shown to me with scarce anf circulation whatever to be discovered ; with their eyes sunk within the orbits ; jaws set, bodies cold, and extremities livid."*

During the year 1790 cholera was very prevalent again in Ganjam ; in 1794 at Vellore, where it was described as the " Causis."


 * Scott's ' Report,' p. xii.