GREAT EPIDEMICS—ASIATIC CHOLERA. 287 
finished its work, languishes, and seems to disappear, but 
it still continues to betray its presence here and there at 
longer or shorter intervals. 
II, 
We have seen that the first great epidemic observed in 
the Indies, before its appearance in Europe, occurred in 
1817; at that date the cholera became a traveler, but it 
had long existed in Asia. The testimony of philology and 
archeology proves in the clearest way that it has been 
known there from early antiquity. Hindoo mythology re- 
lates that the two Aswyns, or sons of Surya, the sun, taught 
medicine to Indra, who composed the “Ayur-Veda,” the most 
ancient medical book in India. Indra in turn taught the 
art to Dhawantrie, and he had for a scholar Susruta, con- 
temporary with Rama, the hero of the Ramayana. Now, 
Susruta left a work which Dr. Wise, director of the medical 
service at Bengal, translated and abridged in 1845, and in 
which a distinct description of the cholera is found. It is 
not easy to give the true date for this composition; but 
Tholozan supposes there are good reasons for fixing it 
about the third century before the Christian era. Other San- 
scrit works of the same date speak of asimilar malady. The ~ 
most curious illustration is an inscription copied at Viz- 
zianuggur by Sanderson, upon a monolith, part of the ruins 
of an ancient temple. This inscription, which is ascribed 
to a pupil of Buddha, and seems to date from an age pre- 
ceding the conquest of Alexander, reads as follows: “ Blue 
lips, a shrunken face, hollow eyes, the belly knotted, the 
limbs cramped and crooked as if by effect of fire, are marks 
of the cholera, which comes down by malign conjurations 
of the priests to destroy heroes. The thickened breath 
clings to the warrior’s face, his fingers are bent and twisted 
in different ways; he dies in contortions, the victim of the 
wrath of Siva.” Many Hindoo and Persian works of a later 
