Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/236

 '''6. LEPROSY'''.—Cases of this horrid disease are common all over Hindostan,and in both sexes, but confined especially to those of low castes. It does not seem materially to shorten the span of life, but to confine its ravages to the extremities; lopping off joint after joint, toe after toe, and finger after finger, and eventually the entire hand or foot, while the outcast victims drag out a lengthened existence in loathsome misery. It is firmly believed by the natives to be hereditary as well as contagious; no one thinks of inter-marrying with a leper, and contact of any sort is abhorred.

7. CHOLERA.—Cholera is the most alarming disease, and when epidemic, its ravages are like those of a destroying angel. I am inclined to think that it is much less frequent now, than it was twenty or thirty-years ago, though not less virulent. Hence a visitation from it causes universal alarm. I have a theory of my own upon Cholera, which it may be well to mention here; it may not be new, and it may not be true, but by it I can account for most of its concomitant symptoms; and its adoption renders the numerous names used to express a supposed different type superfluous; such as Blue Cholera, Cholera Asiatica, Cholera Asphyxia, Cholera Spasmodia, &c., for I believe, all these are merely different stages of the same disease. I will not pretend to