The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1892-12-07
DON'T GET FRIGHTENED.
As En- nslish Army Officer's Advice to Those
Stricken with the Plague.

@At least 80 per cent of the people
who die when attacked by cholera die
of fright" said an English army officer
the other night at an uptown hotel to
q N. Y. San man. The officer is a
man of middle age, who has passed
over twenty years of his life in Burmah
and India. He has seen genuine Asiatic
cholera in its deadliest forms, and,
like most of the Englishmen there,
%got used to it." By way of illustration
of his remark he told the following
story:
@While in Burmah a fellow officer,
an old and very intimate friend of mine,
was attacked with the disease. I was
away at the time he was taken sick,
but returned soon enough to find that
he had been given up by the physi-
clans and all his friends and was look
ed on as practically dead. Everyone
had stopped coming to see him and he
was lying in his room alone. could
not bring myself to believe that the
man who had been through so many
rough experiences with me was going
to lie down and die in that manner,
and determined to make an effort to
brace him up.
@I went into his room and walked
over to the bed, and said, Hello, old
boyl What's the matter with you?'
He turned over and said, I'm done
for this time; the eholera's got me.
Nonsense said. Cholera! You've
no more cholera than I have; little at
tack of dysentery.'
~Then looked at the table by his
bed and saw half glass of milk that
he had been drinking standing there.
took the milk up and said, I'm aw-
fully hot, old fellow; you won't mind
my drinking your milk, will youP' He
turned over and said, For Gods sake,
don't drink that; I've been drinking
it; you'll get the cholera laughed
and said, Nonsense; tell you you've
no more cholera than I have Then
/ drank the milk right in front of him.
After this / sat around and talked
cheerfully with him for quite awhile,
and left him feeling much better and
more hopeful.
@When the physician called on him
that night he hardly knew his patient.
The crisis had passed, for, instead Of
giving away to the weakness that fol-
lowed and dying without an effort to
save himself, he began to pick up, and
in q few days was we'll Of course he
had the cholera, and / ran some risk,
but saved him and didn't kill my
self"
This same officer told of a trip that
he took in Burmah up one of the
estuaries with a party of 800 coolies.
On the return trip the cholera broke
out among them. One night he went
to bed at the end of one of the barges
on which they were floating down
stream, the coolies stretched them
selves out at the other end. During
the night there was more or less
moving about and several times he
felt some ones arm or leg thrown
across his own. Each time he half
woke up and kicked it off; then he
fell asleep again. In the morning
when he arose he found himself lying
between the bodies of two coolies, both
of whom had died during the night.
1t was these men whom he had been
kicking all night. Before the trip was
over some fifty of the coolies had died.
. He himself was never touched with
cholera.
The officer maintains that if people
will not get excited and Frustrated
with fear their chances of surviving the
cholera are very good, even if attacked,
and that they are not likely to be at
tackled then, either.