Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/33

 EXTENSION THrvOUGHOUT BENGAL IN 1817.

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the town and suburbs of tlie species of cholera morbus." This statement having b^en sent on to the medical board, they declare the disease to be cholera morbus, and that " it generally prevails to a greater or less degree at the present season of the year. It has, however, of late been faf more -fatal than at any former period within the recollection of the oldest inhabitants, running a course generally *in a few hours, and sometimes in a few minutes,"* features which, nevertheless, had been ascribed to it, cen- turies before, by the Portuguese at Goa, and in other localities.

I have already noticed the existence of cholera at Patna and Mymensing in July, 1817, and in Calcutta early in August. At this time it also appeared at Dacca and Naraingunge. On^the 2ord of the month it was raging throughout Jessore, and in Chitta- gong on the eastern side of the Bay of Bengal ;t at the same moment it appeared in Eajeshahye, a central district lying east of the Ganges, and afterwards in the high and distant tracts of Bhaugulpore and Monghyr. By the middle of September Ihe inhabit- ants of Purneah, Dinagepore, Balasore, and Cuttack were affected. On the 17th it had spread to Buxar, Chupra, Ghazeepore, and, towards the end of the month, to Mozufferpore.J

In October the districts of Baulea, Berhampor§, and Pvungpore 'came under the influence of cholera ; and, in fact, within three months from its appearance, the disease had been generated throughout the Province


 * MS. Proceeding of the Bengal Medical Board for 1817.

t Dr- Mac Rae, writing from Chittagong, November, 1818, states : " I had constant opportunities of observing it as it prevails in tliis district more or less every hot season."

+ Jameson's ' Report,' p. xi.