The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-06-30
STORIES OF THE CHOLERA.
An Oriental Traveller Talks Of the
Origin Of the Asiatic Plague.
Its Progress from East to West, Spreading
Death on Every Hand-CardS with
Grim Surroundings.
Chicago News.

has spent eight years in Eastern countries and
asked him whether he ever happened to have
experiences in the midst of the cholera cpl
denies that are understood to sweep over por-
tons of Hindoostan periodically with great
virulence
eyes" was the reply, 'I have some vivid
Pecollections of the ravages of cholera in India.
Sit down and I will tell you some of them. As
you are probably aware, India is the natural
home of the malady. 1t is always making its
appearance there suddenly, either epidemically
sporadically, sometimes in the larger cities
like Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Ahmedabad,
Allahabad. Delhi, Agra, or Lahore, and some
times in the mofussil or country districts.
Knowing its terrible and mysterious modes of
travelling it is unremittingly watched by the
special health officers employed by the govern
ment of India and the governments of the
different presidencies and provinces. 1t fire.
quently. however, battles every precaution to
confne it, and 1 believe that every great
epidemic of cholera morbus which has spread
ravages in Europe, Africa, or America, could
be traced originally to some outburst of the
disease in India. When the British troops were
occupying Egypt after the suppression of Arab
Pashas rebellion you will remember the fright
full scenes which were witnessed in Alexandria,
Cairo Port Said, and throughout the delta of
the Nile. The English authorities tried to make
it apper that this outbreak of cholera was merely
local, but subsequent inquiries showed that it
commenced after the death in the Egyptian
waters of several sailors who hod just arrived
from Bombay. AS Toulon is seaport which
does a considerable trade with the East it is
highly probable that the present epidemic was
brought from that part of the world, and am
the confident in this belief by the fact that
only so far back as the middle of last
April cable advices from Calcutta re-
ported that cholera had suddenly burst
out there with so much violence that
the European residents and all else who could
afford to do so were flying from the city of pal
aces The circumstances of the first authentic
ated appearance of cholera as an epidemic should
never be forgotten by either Europe or America,
because they show the wonderful capacity of the
malady to travel from India thousands of miles
westward without apparently, it being within
human power to arrest its ersYtic but neverthe-
less MEMORABLE progress. About one hundred
and fifty years ago there was mela, or sacred
festival held in an obscure village in Bengal.
Tens of thousands of Hindoos gathered there
from all parts of the country to do poojah or
worship to the god who supposed to be
supreme on the occasion. These people bathed
in the same tank which supplied them with
drinking water That tank was already green
with decayed vegetation, and its surface was
covered with tons of orange and mogra
flowers, which had been brought as
this that for that multitude of pilgrims there ex-
listed no sanitary accommodation whatever, and
you will not be surprised at what followed
Suddenly new and deadly disease broke out.
Thousands of men and women were attacked by
it. and died within few hours. Panic-stricken,
the survivors fled from the plague to their homes
all over the country. Soon the plague appeared
in spots elsewhere, and from that time the dis
ease known as cholera commenced a long and
terribly fatal march westward. Neither the
hot blasts of the Persian gulf, the savage rocky
Businesses of Afghanistan nor the arid
steppes of Turkistan prevented it from
appearing in Europe, in which there was
scarcely a capital that escaped from the
unknown scourge. In the course. of years it
was carried across the Atlantic with results
which many an old inhabitant of the West In
dies and this country must remember with
shudder The epidemic took many, many years
to travel from that little sacred village in Ben
gal to the western shores of the Atlantic but
the point to observe is that it did it. and that at
the present day, when the interchange of com
merce between remote countries is so great and
can be made so rapidly, nation, when it hears
of an epidemic of cholera in India, should neg
lect to take every precaution that science and
common sense should suggest"
'Do you think there is any means of prevent
ing cholera from fastening a countryl"
1.-THE recent discovery of cholera bacili or
germs may providentially lead to the further
discovery of the means of preventing choleraic
epdemics; but as yet l am not aware that sci
ence has been able do more with regard to
arriving at true understanding of cholera than
to observe that as general rule it has decided
affinity with dirt rotten vegetation, and foul
water, either in wells or sewers. 1t is for this
reason that l sympathize with the persistent
efforts of the Daily News to make the response
BILE officers of the municipality wake up from
FOOLS paradise of happy o-lucky optimism and
give this city of Chicago thorough cleansing
cityp Don't let it go until what Tennyson graph
icaly calls the poached filth that floods the mid
die streets has disappeared"
But how about your eXperiencesW
''Oh, yes; l was coming to these. Well,
remember that in 1856 there was a most
grevous famine in the Madras presidency, CON
sequent on the failure of the crops and the utter
inability of the poverty stricken ryots or agr
culturists to make any resistance to the calam
ity Among other cities, l visited Madura
where the vast deserted palaces built by Trmul
Naik, suggest that in his days the race of build
ers must have been Titans and not poor, weak
Hindoos. In wandering through the almost de-
serted streets was Mortified to find lying down
under the shadows of temples or colossal ruins
men, women and children shrunk into the sem
blance of Skeletons and dying, too weak to ask for
aims. l fled from the city as if it were plague
stricken. But wherever | went the same scenes
met my eyes. l learned then that, superadded to
the horrors of starvation, among more
than five millions of people cholera had made its
appearance. The government officers quarreled
about whether the disease was cholera or famine
fever, but the people died everywhere in thou
sands all the same. The symptoms were iden-
teal with those of cholera morbus. When a
man or a woman was attacked collapse ensued in
from one to two hours. A more God-forsaken
looking country than the southern portion of
India was at this time could not be imagined:
Shortly after this all India was fairly Mortified
by the report of calamity which occurred on
the Oudh 81 Rohicund railway. A party of pill
grims to a shrine near Cawnpore were returning
to Lucknow. The train was literally packed
with hundreds of human beings Although the
journey was comparatively short one, when
the train arrived at its destination a spectacle
of the most revolving and terrible de-
scrption was laid before the officials at the
depot. From the entire train there issued
sounds of groaning cursing, praying and wild
despair. During the journey cholera had APP
peared in one of the carriages, and then run like
lightning through the whole of the miserable