Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/523

 CHOLERA 511 spread in every direction with the march of armies, pilgrims, merchants, and travellers, often in the face of contrary winds and mon- soons, although the speed of its progress was accelerated by favoring winds which forced along vessels containing the disease. It was conveyed south in ships to Ceylon, and south- west to Mauritius, and over to Zanzibar on the east coast of Africa, and from there up to Mus- cat at the foot of the Persian gulf, in slave ships, and down again southeast to Bombay. It was also carried east to Burmah, Siam, Ma- lacca, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, the Philippine islands, and northeast to Canton in China by ships. This epidemic and that of 1781 were distinctly Juggernaut-pilgrim choleras, and for years after we have a repetition of the old story: "Cholera in Calcutta; the pilgrims at Juggernaut suffering severely." In 1826 the first indications of another pestilence appear- ed in the north of India; epidemic cholera broke out at Hurdwar, the great place of pil- grimage at the source of the Ganges, where it first issues from the foot of the Himalaya mountains. A few hundred thousand pilgrims go to Hurdwar every year ; more every third year ; still more every sixth and ninth years, and fully 3,000,000 assemble every 12th year, and a vaster number every 60th year. From Hurdwar cholera was carried back by the huge caravans which came down to the festival from central Asia, Persia, and Afghanistan, to Cabool. Then the disease advanced over the great northwest central Asiatic caravan route to Balkh, Bokhara, and Khiva, and to Orenburg in Russia ; also from Cabool by the north Per- sian route due west to Herat, Meshed, Teheran, and Reshd, at the foot of the Caspian sea ; and from there up to Astrakhan in Russia, both by sea and land. Cholera reached Orenburg on Aug. 26, 1829, and Astrakhan in September. From Orenburg it proceeded due west to Nyni Novgorod and Moscow ; and from Astrakhan it advanced step by step up the Volga toward the same places, until the stream' which had flow- ed through central Asia to western Russia and Orenburg formed a junction with that which entered southern Russia from the northern provinces of Persia. From Moscow the dis- ease was distributed all over northern and west- ern Russia, especially to Riga, on the Baltic, from which 60 or 70 English coal vessels fled in haste, carrying the disease to Sunderland and Newcastle in England. At this time the great Polish revolution of 1830-'31 was going on, and Russian troops carried the disease to Warsaw, whence it was conveyed due west to Posen and Berlin, and from there to Ham- burg and over to London. After the pesti- lence had prevailed in England, Ireland, and Scotland, it was carried by 10 or 12 Irish emi- grant ships to Quebec in the spring of 1832, and from there up the St. Lawrence and across the lakes to Detroit, where it met the United States troops going to the Black Hawk war. In a short time the whole force sent by way of 187 VOL. iv. 33 the lakes was rendered incapable of taking the field ; some were left behind, but the greater part reached Chicago in a most deplorable con- dition ; one company which had been mustered and inspected 14 days before without a man on the sick list, had dropped 47 men out of 78 in that short time ; and one regiment lost over 200 men in a week. It was generally believed that the infection was contracted by the soldiers on the steamboats which had been previously engaged in transporting crowds of emigrants westward from Montreal and Quebec ; and the army surgeons agreed in asserting that previous to the arrival of these steamboats not a case had been observed in Chicago. It was distributed to all the national posts and forts in the extreme west, especially to Fort Dearborn at Chicago, Fort Crawford near Prairie du Chien, and Fort Armstrong at Rock Island. From there the pestilence was carried down the Mississippi to New Orleans by October, 1832; and Surgeon General Lawson says, " One fact is certain : no case of cholera occurred in New Orleans until after the arrival of steamboats with cases of cholera on board, and after a number of their passengers had died of it ; 6,000 died out of a population of 55,000." The next great 12- yearly epidemic commenced in lower Bengal in 1841, advanced over India and toward the N. W. provinces ; was supplemented by a Hurd- war epidemic in 1843, and was found in Af- ghanistan in 1844, in Persia and Meshed in 1845, advancing west in 1846 to Teheran, and up between the Black and Caspian seas toward southern Russia, reaching Astrakhan July 30, 1847. But especially it was deflected west to Trebizond and Poti, on the southern and east- ern coasts of the Black sea, and from there carried over to Constantinople and Odessa, and up the Danube to Germany, whence it was carried to Holland and England. Toward the close of the year 1848 numbers of German emigrants arrived at Havre, and some of them were carried to New Orleans on the ship Swanton, with 13 deaths from cholera before arrival, and from which six cases were sent on shore. Dr. Fenner says, after the disease had once commenced in New Orleans, almost every vessel and steamer leaving that city had 20 or 30 cases on board; and thus persons having cholera and dying with it were carried to all the landing towns and cities up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers as high up as Cincinnati. From St. Louis it was carried over the emi- grant route to San Francisco ; more than 1,000 emigrants died on the road, and many Indians who loitered along from curiosity and for the purpose of begging paid a terrible penalty. In the mean while the Austrian, Hungarian, and Russian armies contending in Hungary in the spring and summer of 1849 had become the principal centre and focus of the disease, whence it spread with terrible virulence into Poland and Germany. The next and last great 12- yearly epidemic commenced in India in April, 1865. By means of railroads and steamboats,