CHAPTER VI. 

 CHOLERA. 



CHOLERA is a disease from which certain parts of India 

 are never free. These areas, in which it is endemic, are 

 the foci from which the great epidemics of the world, as 

 well as the constant smaller epidemics of India, probably 

 spread. No one knows when cholera was first introduced 

 into India, and the probabilities are that it is indigenous 

 to that country, as yellow fever is to Cuba. Very early 

 mention of it is made in the letters of travellers, in 

 books and papers on medicine of a century ago, and 

 in the governmental statistics, yet we find that little is 

 said about the disease except in a general way, most 

 attention being directed to the effect upon the armies, 

 native and European, of India and adjacent countries. 

 The opening up of India by Great Britain in the last 

 half century has made possible much accurate scientific 

 observation of the disease and the relation which its epi- 

 demics bear to the manners and customs of the people. 



The filthy habits of the people of India, their poverty, 

 their crowded condition, and their religious customs, all 

 serve to aid in the distribution of the disease. We are 

 told that the city of Benares drains into the Ganges River 

 by a most imperfect system, which distributes the greater 

 part of the sewage immediately below the banks upon 

 which the city is built. It is a matter of religious ob- 

 servance for every zealot who makes a pilgrimage to the 

 "sacred city " to take a bath in and drink a large quan- 

 tity of this sacred but polluted water, and, as may be 

 imagined, the number of pious Hindoos who leave 

 Benares with comma bacilli in their intestines or upon 

 their clothes is great, for there are few months in the 



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