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Excerpt from book: ASIATIC CHOLERA. CHAPTER I. The successive epidemics of Asiatic Cholera which have prevailed since 1817, when it first left the Delta of the Ganges to become a universal pestilence, have been marked by a striking uniformity in their prominent features. In fact, this uniformity excites a doubt as to whether the destructive epidemics of cholera, which reliable authorities have described as existing previously to 1817, could have committed such fierce ravages and yet remain within such comparatively narrow limits, if there had been present the same progressive elements which have characterized its subsequent career. It is also remarkable that medical writers of remote antiquity, in describing the cholera as a diseaseindigenous to the banks of the Ganges and detailing its features, do not speak of its epidemic character; for this is noticed by them as a mark of other pestilential diseases of that period, and is so striking a feature of Asiatic Cholera that it could not have escaped observation if it had' been present. The probable inference therefore is, that the cases described were for the most part instances of sporadic cholera, while it is possible that other diseases with somewhat similar symptoms were also described under that name. Aretaeus (A.D. 50) gives an account of cholera, and describes the dejections, loas of voice, general coldness, and suppression of urine. The disease is also noticed in Sanskrit. From 1769 to 1790 there are also reliable accounts of cholera (endemic?) by Chisholm, Folly, Curtis, Grirdlestone, Jameson, Johnson, Konig, Sonucrat, Thomson, and others. See " Die Epidemische Cholera." - Dr. Drasche, Vienna, 1860. From the middle of the eighteenth century to its close, and during the early part of the nineteenth, there are trustworthy account...