The Milroy lectures on epidemic influences : on the epidemiological aspects of yellow fever : on the epidemiological aspects of cholera / by Robert Lawson.

  • Lawson, Robert, 1892-1957.
Date:
1888
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Milroy lectures on epidemic influences : on the epidemiological aspects of yellow fever : on the epidemiological aspects of cholera / by Robert Lawson. 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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    Thus tlie cliolerific factor was active from 1872 to 1874 over the sea from Sumatra to the south-west as far as Mauritius, while over the greater part of Hindostan it was in inoperative, and the disease had almost disappeared. This frequency of cholera over the sea ceased suddenly in 1875, there having been but one death reported that year, in the Lady Melville, bound for Mauritius, after she was twenty days out, and, coincident with its cessation, the epidemic overspread Hindostan from Cape Comorin to Lahore, and what was unusual, Ceylon was affected before the neighbouring portion of the Madras Presidency. Such a succession cannot be regaT^ded as fortuitous, though for the present we do not see how it is to be explained.^ It is a remarkable fact, worthy of being mentioned in connection with the occurrences in 1872-74 detailed above, that, during the great extension of cholera subsequent to 1817, the disease became epidemic early in 1819 at Penang, Sincapore, in Sumatra, and Java, and in November in Mauritius, passing on to Bourbon in 1820, and either in the end of that year or early in the follov/ing one it was at Zanzibar, and indications of it were experienced as far as the Ca]3e of Good Hope, in a considerable increase in the admissions from simple cholera among the troops. The cholera on this occasion v/as supposed by some to have been introduced at Mauritius by H.M.S. Topaze, which arrived on 29th October from Ceylon, having been twenty days on the passage, and having had sixteen men attacked with cholera immediately after sailing, of whom four died. On the other hand, a commission appointed by the Oovernor to examine into the question, reported that the first well- marked case of the disease occurred on 6th September,2 nearly two months before the Topaze arrived. 1 read a paper before the Epidemiological Society in 1871, which will be found in the third volume of their Transactions, at page 288, in this the details of a considerable number of outbreaks of cholera on board ships in both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean are given, with the necessary information as to time and locality, as far as they were available. These illustrate the diffusion of the epidemic factors over a very extensive area ; as it would occupy too much time, however, to introduce even a moderate number of them here, it may be stated, in general terms, that when present they ^ The facts here dealt with will be found more in detail in the Epidemio- logical Transactions, vol. iv, new series, p. 90, ei seq. 2 A Treatise on Asiatic Cholera, by C. Macnamara; London, 1870, p. 41.