The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-03-23
ORIGIN AND HISTORY OE CHOLERA.
Possibility Of its Becoming NHturHlized
In America,

eminent European physicians was held aJ Ooil-
stantinople, under the express sanction OF the
Turkish Government and # the Governments
of all the great powers of Europe whose medi-
cal representatives took part in its delibera-
tions. The sole subject of discussion before
this conference of physicians was the possi-
bility of preventing the continued invasion7 OF
Europe by that most fatal of all modern cpl
denies, Asiatc cholera. Three reports and an
appendix have been published, giving the con-
clusions to which the conference has arrived,
and these reports and appendix have in turn
been reviewed at considerable length in the
London Quarterly. As a matter of course the
reviewer and the conference by no means
always agree in their conclusions, though in
the main they do not differ widely. Both are
agreed that it was in India that the disease
first made its appearance; that in India it has
now become naturalized, and is epidemic in its
character; and that from India it has started
on those periodic westward marches which
have at different times filed Europe and the
New World with greater CONSERVATION than
any invading enemy, and in which its victims
have outnumbered those of the bloodiest
battle-feds. The first notice we have OF the
cholera is from the pen of Garcia del Huerto,
physician resident in the settlement OF Goa,
who, in a book published by him under the
name Of Dorta, in 1868, describes the cholera
under the two names of mordeshjn and of hach-
aka, the former used by the Mahrattas and
the latter by the Mahommedans. In 1859, its
existence i'll Goa was again ChroniCled by
DutChman named Einschot and in 1929
another Dutchman, named Bontias, gives an
account of its ravages in Java. The cholera
is mentioned also by various writers in 1888
and 1916 as a well-known Indian diseaee,
generally fatal to those attacked by it, and as
lingering long time round the places where
it made its appearance. In 1859 the army of
Aurungzefe was attacked by it with such vio-
lence that no one dare deem his life his own
for q single hour; after which year we have
no well-ascertained facts regarding it until
its appearance in Arcot in 1856, although it is
believed that in 1877 it was cholera which
broke out with awful severity in the army
of Nadir Shah during his invasion of
the DecCan. 1t ragged in the neighbOr-
hood of Arcot with greater or less intensity,
at different times, until 1857, and seems even
to have been conveyed across the sea to the
Isle of France in l775--mOst likely from Surat
or Goa, where we hear OF its annual ravages
from 1775 to 1850. How many persons died
during these years from this disease we have
no means of ascertaining, but it is said that
during the year 1864 over 10000 lives were
destroyed by it in Northern India, or what is
now the Presidency of Bengal; while in 1888,
in Lower Bengal, it is said to have broken
out among the pilgrims assembled near Hurd-
war, where it carried off over &c, 600 men in
few days. After this its violence appears to
have somewhat abated, and we hear of it but
occasionally during the following years, until
in 1917 it set out on the progress which few
years later filed Europe and America with the
dead. In 1917, it first appeared on the banks
of the Ganges, at Calcutta, whence it has
never since entirely disappeared.
Neither the conference reports nor the re-
viewer follow its subsequent movements
through Nepaul, Persia, Arabia, and Asia
Minor, which it reached in 1928 from whence,
in 1929, it travelled to Southern Russia in
1880, made its appearance in Moscow in 1884,
by rapid marches it had Overrun the whole Of
Central Europe, and in October of the same
year spread terror through England by its
ravages at Sunderland while in June of the
following year it had crossed the Atlantic, and
begun its work of death at Quebec. From the
accounts we have of its progress prior to lSl7,
and the circumstances under which it ap-
peared, it seems that its main peculiarities
have always been the same. 1t has affected
sea coasts and dshipping; prevailed at particular
seasons and though the mouths of tidal rivers
and alluvial lands have been it's favorite seats,
it has shown that it can also spread and thrive
on the most different soils. These are the
conclusions of the reviewer, which certainly
seem borne out by the facts; but the confe-
renee, in considering the origin of cholera,
conclude that 'there are in India certain
localities, especially in the valley of the
Ganges, where cholera is endemic, although it
is difficult to say precisely which they are, OF
to affirm that they have the exclusive privi-
lege of giving birth to the disease. Cholera
seems to be an original product of the valley
of bn 4ha cbplapo of tha iuyvaIi in
character which we have in our days, being
necessarily the result of new conditions which
have produced themselves in India about 1917,
we may conceive that those conditions are not
indelible, and that if we could ascertain the
causes that keep up the disease in certain
| countries, we might succeed in making them
| disappear. Cholera being only of late years
| in state of peTmanenCe must be due to some
new and special condition of those local.
| ties; its permanence; is not to be explained
| by successive transmissions, but by some
thing inherent in the places themselves" Sc
far as our knowledge extends the reviewer
| seems to have the best side of the argument
when he states that neither in the habits Of
| the Hindoos, which have been exactly the
| same for ages, nor in the climatic conditions o.
| the year 1877, is it possible to find any of the
| 'new conditions" which gave to the cholera
| of 1877 its Invading character; and at pre-
sent it seems that our knowledge is altogether
too limited to enable us to form decided
opinion as to the cause of the periodic move
ments of cholera in recent times. Boil
conference and reviewer agree that the
maximum prevalence of cholera is during
hot weather; that it fourishes most il
districts of which the alluvial and ter
tiary, rather than the primary, are thu
prevailing geological formations, and OF
low, rather than elevated sites. They pro
| n0nncn STRONGLY in favor of the theory that thl