293 [Assembly 



devastation among the inhabitants of every corner of the globe, which, 

 have fallen particularly under my observation, and which I take the 

 liberty of laying before you. The one is, that when in China, during 

 the year 1829, the influenza prevailed to such an extent on board 

 the ships in the fleet, and also among Europeans in Canton, that 

 scarcely one escaped the complaint j on board one ship in particular^ 

 out of a crew of one hundred and thirty-six, no less than one hun- 

 dred and twenty were laid up with the epidemic at one time, yet 

 neither then, nor up to the time of my last voyage to China, had a 

 single Chinese, that I could hear of, been attacked with the influ- 

 enza, although in the mean time this epidemic had spread over all 

 India and Europe, and crossing the Atlantic, had visited America. 

 The other fact is, that although on each one of eight voyages I made 

 to China, many of my crew had fallen a prey to cholera, yet I have 

 never heard of a Chinese being attacked with this fatal epidemic. 

 And this is the more remarkable from the crowded population of the 

 country, subsisting as they very often do on very unwholesome food. 

 As then the Chinese, with whom Tea is the universal diluent, have 

 escaped diseases that other nations, and more particularly the Coffee- 

 drinking French, have suffered so much from, it may not be unworthy 

 the attention of the society, whether Tea may not be regarded as the 

 principal cause of this happy exemption from such fatal and wide 

 spreading maladies." 



The captain is undoubtedly correct in respect to his immediate 

 sphere of observation. Canton, at th* time he wrote, as to the non- 

 appearance of the cholera in China, but further evidence rebuts his 

 testimony so far as it relates to that particular disease. Upon the 

 authority of the Chinese Repository, it appears that the cholera raged 

 at Ning-po in 1820—23, at Amoy and Changchau and the vicinity 

 of those places in 1842. We have no account of its appearance in 

 Canton, excepting a few cases in 1835.* 



But it is a remarkable fact in connection with this branch of the 

 subject, that the Javanese and Chinese Tea drinkers are entirely ex- 

 empt from those two great scourges of the human family, the plague 

 and the stone.f Nevertheless, when we consider the density of the 

 population of China, 450 in some provinces to the square mile, and 

 the vast aggregate of 300,000,000 who people the country, we can- 

 not fail to perceive that the ravages of the cholera in China, com- 



*Chiiie8e Repository, Vol. 4, p. 48. tChioese Repository, Vol. 1, p. 488k 



