G42 A DISSERTATION ON THE EPIDEMIC CHOLERA. 
undigested mass acquiring a poisonous character. This also 
would explain the cause of the furious riots in Paris and St. 
Petersbargh on the first breaking out of the epidemic, the popu¬ 
lace conceiving that they were poisoned by the doctors, and also 
by the vintners, many of whom nearly lost their lives through 
this suspicion. 
And we also endeavoured to explain why, at other times, as 
in the more protracted cases, without actually destroying the 
patient at once, it produced effects on the nervous system, such 
as gave to it very much the appearance of a low nervous fever, 
or typhus. To these remarks were added what we conceived to 
be the genuine principles for its treatment, by recalling, by eveiy 
possible means combined, the restoration of the impaired or lost 
digestive and chylopoietic functions. 
In the present memoir, it is proposed to inquire into the an¬ 
tiquity and original signification of the term choleray and to ex¬ 
amine the views and opinions of those physicians who followed 
immediately after the ancients, and from whom we have princi¬ 
pally derived our present erroneous views of the disease, and 
then those of our modern physicians, and to conclude by giving 
to the disease a new name and arrangement in the medical 
system. 
Desirous of ascertaining more exactly the origin of the term 
cholera among the ancients, and the sense in which they em¬ 
ployed it, and how these erroneous notions of the bilious nature 
of this complaint first originated, I was led, in order to pursue 
these researches, to avail myself of the two noble medical li¬ 
braries in Lincoln’s-inn-fields, that of the College of Surgeons, 
and that of the Medico-Chirurgical Society; and I acknowledge 
with pleasure my having received the most polite attention and 
satisfactory aid from the two respective librarians having the 
care of these valuable collections. 
As far back as Hippocrates, the word cholera is found: it 
several times occurring in his works, and always standing by it¬ 
self, and without the modern adjunct of morbus attached to it. 
It is, therefore, of very remote antiquity; but in his descriptions 
of the disease he does not appear particularly to refer it to a 
bilious origin, neither does he appear to have ever seen it in the 
character of a terrible epidemic, such as it has appeared of late 
years in India and in Europe. 
Before Hippocrates, however, Erasistratus describes the dis¬ 
order, and without appearing particularly to insist on its bilious 
origin or character. 
But the word cholera is to be found long antecedent to both 
the above writers, and at a period nearly coeval with the earliest 
