The Workingman's Companion Author:John Conolly Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. DESCRIPTION OF CHOI/ERA. The disease which is called Cholera, or Asiatic Cholera, or Cholera Morbus, or Spasmodic Cholera, is often spoken of a... more »s one which was un known until about fifteen years ago; but it is evi - dent, from the description of the older writers both of India and of Europe, that the diseasa had frequently been seen before. Its appearance is shown to have generally been as sudden, and its attacks to have been as violent as in later times. Persons in full health became all at once seized with convulsions, and died in a few hours; the disease in these respects resembling one which the Indian writers describe, if not indeed the very same disease, and in which the whole case is often comprehended in the words " Being seized with vomiting and purging, he immediately died." In the year 1781, a division of Bengal troops, Under the command of Colonel Pearse, was attacked by the disease with as much fury and with results as fatal as if it had encountered the enemy: men who seemed to be in good health became suddenly ill, and dropped down " by dozens," dying almost immediately. At an Indian festival in 1783, above twenty thousand of the people there assembled were destroyed by cholera But it was not until the year 1817 that it began to excite general attention, caused great alarm, and became the subject of careful observation. In that year it prevailed in India most extensively, beginning without any known cause, unless some irregularity in the seasons can be looked upon as such, and continuing to spread in every variety of season and weather, iu every variety of heat and cold, and rain and drought, attacking Indians and Europeans, and people of all constitutions. It commenced in Bengal, from which part of India it has hardly ever since been absent; ...« less