Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Remarks on the history and etiology of cholera / by David Craigie. 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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![which he has been followed by Curtis and some other English authors. Gth, I have now to observe that the term Mordecliim, Mor- deccim, or Mordechin, which has been so differently written by European authors, and so strangely corrupted by Sonnerat and Curtis, is a word of Persian origin used by the Hindoos, and adopted from them by the Portuguese. It is not found in DTIerbelot; and though adopted in the Portuguese dictionaries, no etymological explanation of it has been given. I think it cannot be doubted that it consists of the two roots to die, ox death] or dead, and which, among its other significations, denotes the bowels, and consequently was used by the natives, as if to signify bowel-death. From the compound Indo-Persian term \ the Portuguese must l ^ have adopted by the ear, the term Mordexim, pronounced as x always is in that language like the guttural ch. This deriva- tion, which I conceive to be the just one, shows, that the name ought to be written Mordecliim, or Murdechim, or, if the Por- tuguese form be adopted, Murdexim. It is superfluous to remark, how expressive the name is of the character of the malady. 7tli. It is a historical fact established by the clearest evi- dence, that epidemics are mentioned by Sonnerat previous to 1774, and that subsequently, we have evidence of sudden out- breaks attacking large and multitudinous bodies of human be- ings, in 1780, 1781, and 1700. More early mention of epi- demics might, no doubt, be found in the native records. II. and III.—When cholera made its first appearance in this country, at Sunderland in September 1831, it was by many believed to have been imported by vessels from the Baltic; and several endeavours were made to trace the particular vessels by which the disease was introduced. This idea the two cases given by Dr Hazlewood and Mr Mordey, as occurring at South- wick and Pallion, on the 5th and 9th of August, were suffi- cient to render excessively doubtful, if not to overthrow entire- ly. A similar case, occurring in Newton, on the Gth January 1833, under the care of Mr Steele, is given in the work of Mr G. H. Bell. The most conclusive of all I conceive is the fol- lowing, which took place in July in Newbigging, a small district or suburb of Musselburgh. llobcrt lleid, aged 51, a potter, and exposed in consequence of working at the kiln, to great and sudden vicissitudes of heat and cold, was attacked, on Monday the 11th July 1831, with](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2196984x_0026.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
