A treatise on the epidemic cholera : containing its history, symptoms, autopsy, etiology, causes, and treatment / by Alexander Turnbull Christie.
- Christie, Alexander Turnbull
- Date:
- 1833
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on the epidemic cholera : containing its history, symptoms, autopsy, etiology, causes, and treatment / by Alexander Turnbull Christie. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![departed relatives to the river. At length even this conso- lation was denied them; for the mortality latterly became so great that there was neither time nor hands to carry off the bodies, which were then thrown into the neighbouring ra- vines, or hastily committed to the earth, on the spots on which they had expired, and even round the walls of the officers' tents. All business had given way. to solicitude for the suffering. Not a smile could be discerned, nor a sound heard, except the groans of the dying and the wailing over the dead. Throughout the night, especially, a gloomy silence, interrupted only by the well-known dreadful sounds of poor wretches labouring under the distinguishing symp- toms of the disease, universally prevailed. The natives, thinking that their only safety lay in flight, had now began to desert in great numbers; and the highways and fields, for many miles round, were strewed with the bodies of those who had left the camp with the disease upon them, and speedily sunk under its exhausting effects. It was clear that such a frightful state of things could not last long; and that, unless some immediate check were given to the disorder, it must soon depopulate the camp: it was therefore wisely de- .termined, by the commander-in-chief, to move in search of a healthier soil and of purer air. The division accordingly, on the ]3th, marched in a south-easterly direction, towards Zalgoug and Lileia, and, after several intermediate halts, on the 19th crossed the clear stream of the Betwah, and, upon its high and dry banks at Erich, soon got rid of the pesti- lence, and met with returning health. But its line of march, during the whole of this progressive movement, exhibited a most deplorable spectacle, although every means had been taken, by giving up the ammunition carts, and collecting elephants and draught cattle to procure sufficient carriage, the sick were found too numerous to be moved, and were, in part, necessarily left behind; and as many who left the carts, pressed by the sudden calls of the disease, were unable to rise again, and hundreds dropt down during every subsiequent day's advance, and covered the roads with dead and dying, the ground of encampment and line of march presented the appearance of a field of battle, and of the track of an army retreating under every circumstance of discomfiture and distress. The exact amount of mortality during these few calamitous days could not, from the circumstances of confu- sion and general disorder under which it took place, be ascertained with any degree of accuracy: from the military returns, however, it appears that, in this fatal week, of 11,500 fighting men of all descriptions, 764 fell victims to the c](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21046347_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
