288 NATURE AND LIFE. 
date contain similar proofs. When the Portuguese, in 1498, 
and afterward the Dutch and the English, landed on the 
shores of India, they had frequent opportunities to observe 
epidemic cholera and it is not strange that a description of 
the disease could have been made by European doctors in the 
seventeenth century. We have still detailed accounts of 
the plagues that raged in the eighteenth century, of which 
that of Hurdwar is the most famous. In short, to whatever 
period we recur, we come upon one of the links of that long 
chronological chain of the cholera, which begins with the 
oldest books of Hindoo medicine. 
The causes which have always aided the development 
of cholera in the Indies are active there at the present day. 
Almost every year the disease breaks out in places where 
pilgrims gather. Among these localities, of which some 
are also commercial towns, three particularly attract the 
crowd: they are Hurdwar, on the Ganges, in the north of 
Hindostan; Juggernath, on the coast of Orissa, at the 
northwest of the gulf of Bengal; and Conjeveraw, in the 
south of Madras. Pilgrims arrive at these places in the 
warm season, after a journey of more than a hundred leagues, 
almost always made on foot, in a state of exhaustion and 
wretchedness of which we can hardly form an idea. Once 
in these holy places, their crowding together, their bad food, 
uncleanliness, and debauchery, bring them into such con- 
ditions that the germs of plague develop, and the epidemic 
kindles among them. This infected multitude then scatters 
abroad, and passes through the country in all directions, 
sowing miasma and contagion. 
Thus these immense gatherings of people favor the ex- 
tension of the cholera. Are they at the same time its origi- 
nating causes? We cannot answer positively in either way. 
All possible suppositions have been indulged as to the 
origin of the cholera in India, but none of them really ex- 
plains the difficulty. What is the cause that produces the 
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