Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/59

 CESSATION OF THE EPIDEMIC IN 1822.

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The Board were of opinion that cholera was not a contagious disease, and if quarantine laws had been found useful people would naturally have resorted to them. The removal of a camp was often useful, and in fact stayed* the progress of the disease, although the sick and baggage moved with the camp ; the change from one locality to another being often sufficient to stop the disease, which would not have b^en the case had it been contagious.

Cholera in India subsequent to 1821. The Epidemic of 1826 and its extension to Europe in 1831-32. — Resuming now the history of cholera in India after 1821, we find from the ' Proceedings of the Medical Board ' that the year 1822 was marked by almost absolute rest as regards cholera ; in fact, the great epidemic which had arisen in 1817, well nigh covering Asia within the three succeeding years, had now subsided.* The disease was stiU generated according to its regular periods of increase and diminution throughout the year in its endemic area, which We have thus far in our history seen to extend over the whole seaboard of British India, including Chittagong and the Delta of the Ganges, but which, as we shall subsequently discover, is by no means confined even to this enormous area.

A fair criterion of the comparative death-rates from cholera, for the years 1818 and 1822, is supplied by the Returns of the Madras Army. In 1818 this force amounted. to 69,416 men, and among these 896 'casual- ties occurred from cholera; but in 1822, the force having increased to 85,517 men, only 369 deaths are recorded from this disease. In examining these Returns, we are struck with the marked diff'erence which exists between the death-rate from cholera among our


 * Scott's ' Madras Report,' p. xiii.