98 Dr. Ure on Disinfection. 



account of the introduction into that island of the Oriental 

 cholera, which, having recently transmigrated the middle of 

 Asia and the north of Europe, now desolates the western 

 provinces of Russia, and hovers like an incubus over our 

 shores. The facts it relates will be found interesting and 

 instructive in no ordinary degree. 



< London, June 25, 1831. 



' My dear Sir, I proceed to perform the promise I this day 

 made of furnishing you with some details concerning the intro- 

 duction of the cholera morbus into the Island of Mauritius. 

 This disease was imported there by the British frigate, the Topaz, 

 commanded by Captain Dumby. It is in its nature eminently 

 contagious ; and although this opinion exposed the colony to 

 which I belong to the most violent calumnies on the part of its 

 Governor, General Darling, and to the anger of Lord Bathurst, 

 then Secretary of State for the Colonies, I must persist in 

 maintaining it, because it is proved by the facts about to be 

 related. 



' The Topaz arrived at Mauritius the 28th of December, 

 1819, having just come from Ceylon, where the cholera pre- 

 vailed. This fact is notorious, and is indeed fully verified by 

 the following extract from the Asiatic Mirror , published at 

 Calcutta, the 24th of December, 1819. 



' " We announce with regret that the news brought from 

 Ceylon are very distressing. Fevers, dysentery, and the 

 cholera morbus are spreading in an alarming manner. The 

 7th regiment, and a detachment of the 45th, which have been 

 in the island only for a week, have suffered considerably; 

 thirteen officers of the former, and thirty soldiers of the latter, 

 having fallen victims to this terrible scourge." 



' The report of the physicians who visited the frigate on its 

 .arrival stated, "that the dysentery and the cholera morbus 

 prevailed on board of it." 



' Notwithstanding this, the Physician-General of the Forces 

 in Mauritius and the Governor had the culpable weakness to 

 permit communication between the frigate and the shore. The 

 rumour being universally spread that several men of the frigate 

 were ill of the cholera ; the representation of the Colonel of 



