Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/57

 KEPOET OF THE ]3ENGAL MEDICAL BOAED, 1819. 41

introduction. From the disease pervading classes who have nothing in common but the air they breathe, it can be believed that the cause may exist in the atmo- sphere."*

" The first well-marked case of the present disease occurred on the 6th of September last, and was treated by Mr. Trebuchet in Port Louis" (the " Topaze " did not reach the island until the 29th of October) ; " it differed in nothing from the cases which have presented them- selves since the 18th and 19th instants, and which appeared to break out so suddenly in all quarters of the town."

We may here pause for an instant to consider the conclusions arrived at by the Bengal Medical Board in 1819 regarding the outbreak of epidemic cholera of 1817-19.

The Board called for reports on the subject from all the medical ofl&cers in this Presidency, and the mass of evidence thus obtained was arranged by Mr. Jame- son, Secretary to the Board, and published under their supervision. Their report will remain as an honorable memorial of the Bengal Medical Service fof many years to come, showing what we were capable of forty years ago ; nevertheless we must admit, to our shame, that this report of 1819 was the first — the last — the only combined effort made by the Service to unravel the mystery which from that time up to the present has surrounded this disease.

Mr. Jameson states that the Medical Board had arrived at the conclusion that the proximate cause of the disease consisted in a pestilential vu-us, which

nor of Mciuritius to Inquire into, and Report upon, the probable Cause of the Outbreak of Cholera in the Island of Mauritius in March, 1856,' p. 143, Port Louis, 1857.
 * ' Report of the Committee appointed by His Excellency the Gover-