Transcribed from the [1831] Rowell and Son edition by DavidPrice. Many thanks to the British Library for making theircopy available.
Friends and Fellow Townsmen,
A Meeting of the Inhabitants of this town has been called toconsider the best means of saving us from the attacks of theCholera Morbus, which has overrun so many parts ofEurope. You will be likely to hear a great deal about thisdisorder, and you will naturally be anxious to learn aboutit. The following is the best account of it that I havebeen able to collect, and I give it you, without either makingmore or less of it than the truth will warrant.
CHOLERA MORBUS means in English “a disease of thebile.” Those common bowel complaints which occurevery Autumn are instances of Cholera;the bile is out of order, and the natural action of the bowelsbecomes disordered. But the Cholera which has been so p. 2much talked ofon the Continent of Europe is called Spasmodic Cholera, that is “a diseaseof the bile attended with spasms or cramps.” To saythe truth however, it does not appear that Cholera is a very proper name for it; for itseems much more a disease of the blood than of the bile. Itis by no means always accompanied with disorder in the bowels,but it is as if a man’s life blood were suddenly poisoned;as if it were choked up so that it could not flow freely, andtherefore there is a great feeling of weight and pressure aboutthe heart and chest. The powers of life seem palsied, thelegs and belly become cold and cramped, and the pulse so weakthat you can scarcely feel it. A man dies of the disorderkeeping his senses to the last generally within twenty-fourhours, unless you can succeed in restoring the natural action ofthe blood, and so relieving him from the cramps, and chills, andoppression under which he had laboured.
This is a new disorder in this part of the world, and one asksnaturally how and where it first broke out. It was firstobserved at a place called Jessore in India, about a hundredmiles north east of Calcutta. This was in August, 1817,that is, more than fourteen years ago. How it arose, nobodycan certainly tell. Some say that the rice on which thenatives chiefly live, was very bad that year, and bred thedisorder in those who ate it. But however this be, thedisease has ever since been travelling about in variousdirections in Asia, till in the Autumn of last year, 1830, itmade its appearance in Europe, and p. 3broke out at Moscow in Russia towardsthe end of September. From thence in the present year ithas spread to St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire;to Berlin, the capital of Prussia; to Vienna, the capital ofAustria; and latterly to Hamburg, in Germany, a great city nearthe mouth of the river Elbe, opposite to the eastern coast ofEngland. It is now said to have crossed over to Englandwithin the last week, and to have appeared at Sunderland, inDurham, and at Newcastle upon Tyne, in Northumberland.
The question now is, how does it travel? Is it carriedin the air, or is it caught by one person from another? There are a great many things to be said on both sides, and noone seems yet to have settled the point. On the one hand,as it may be caught by one person from another, it seemsquite right to keep a strict watch over all ships coming fromthose places where the Cholera is known to be prevailing, becausethe inconvenience of