Asiatic cholera : being a report on an outbreak of epidemic cholera in 1876 at a camp near Murree in India / by Charles Moore Jessop.

  • Jessop Charles Moore.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Asiatic cholera : being a report on an outbreak of epidemic cholera in 1876 at a camp near Murree in India / by Charles Moore Jessop. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    SECTION III. Camp Gharial was free from cholera until a detachment encam])ed on Topah. The detachment went from Murreo on July 28th. The general direction of the wind to Gharial is from Topah, and the Cashmere end of Murree. Topah is a high hill, one of the points around which storms rage, and Gharial its spur 1600 yards distant, necessarily comes in for any breezes off its summit. Ou July 30th and subsequently five suspicious cases occurred. These cases were all treated as if of an infectious cha- racter; no disease spread from them. On August 7th five tinmen were found in camp, strangers from Murree, and though they remained healthy, yet it is possible that they may have been direct carriers of cholera air’’ from Murree bazaar by their clothes— especially the pugrees. This air mingling with air al- ready in a condition to receive any fresh conditions for evil may have been the cause of the outbreak. These men tinned the cooking utensils of E company and they would be naturally in close relationship with the eight cooks of that company who may have disseminated some “ unwholesome air ” to the various tents to which they conveyed the messes. The other cases which occurred simultaneously iu the 70th regiment; in E company and the boy Bunkle, 4th Hussars, caunot thus be accounted for. It must, therefore, be assumed that the disorder however introduced tainted the air of the camp generally, and set upon such persons as were in themselves in an insanitary condition, irrespective of their neighbourhood. But whatever theory may be held with reference to the cause of cholera, there can be no doubt it was a hazardous experiment to form a camp on Topah when there was a healthy camp so close and in the direction of wind from it.
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