Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/85

 injurious. I have seen this carried to ridiculous extremes; one was afraid to walk off the high road,lest he should tread upon a cobra, another, would not eat a mango lest it should give him dysentery, nor drink a glass of wine for fear of fever, nor sleep in the hottest weather with a door open for fear of rheumatism, nor sit under a punkah with Fahrenheit at 90, for fear of catching cold, nor bathe in the Ganges for fear of alligators. Nothing is more common than for them to construe a slight cold into a galloping consumption, a headache into the commencement of remittent fever, a bilious diarrhœa into cholera, ringing of the ears into threatened apoplexy, and a spasmodic twinge under the ribs into inflammation of the liver. In fact, every trifling tumefaction is magnified into a mountain;but the mountain instead of being parturient of all the evils of Pandora's box, generally ends in misconception, or in bringing forth nothing but its legitimate mouse.

Such meagrims are very natural, at least they are very prevalent, and they will leave the stranger with increased experience, but he may save himself a deal of anxiety by being for warned of their approach. I don't mean to plead exemption from such nonsense. On my first landing in India, I had also my share of them, but never knew them end in anything serious. The most formidable illness I ever had, was a jungle fever. It came