At this moment of anxious solicitude throughout Europe, when that awful malady, the cholera, is spreading from city to city with rapid strides, the observations I have been enabled to make by personal acquaintance with afflicted subjects in India, may be acceptable to my readers; although I heartily pray our Heavenly Father may in His goodness and mercy preserve our country from that awful calamity, which has been so generally fatal in other parts of the world.

The Natives of India designate cholera by the word ‘Hyza’, which with them signifies ‘the plague’.  By this term, however, they do not mean that direful disorder so well known to us by the same appellation; as, if I except the Mussulmaun pilgrims, who have seen, felt, and described its ravages on their journey to Mecca, that complaint seems to be unknown to the present race of Native inhabitants of Hindoostaun.  The word ‘hyza’, or ‘plague’, would be applied by them to all complaints of an epidemic or contagious nature by which the population were suddenly attacked, and death ensued.  When the cholera first appeared in India (which I believe was in 1817), it was considered by the Natives a new complaint.[15]

In all cases of irritation of the stomach, disordered bowels, or severe feverish symptoms, the Mussulmaun doctors strongly urge the adoption of ‘starving out the complaint’.  This has become a law of Nature with all the sensible part of the community; and when the cholera first made its appearance in the Upper Provinces of Hindoostaun, those Natives who observed their prescribed temperance were, when attacked, most generally preserved from the fatal consequences of the disorder.

On the very first symptom of cholera occurring in a member of a Mussulmaun family, a small portion of zahur morah[16] (derived from zahur, poison; morah, to kill or destroy, and thence understood as an antidote to poison, some specimens of which I have brought with me to England) moistened with rosewater, is promptly administered, and, if necessary, repeated at short intervals; due care being taken to prevent the patient from receiving anything into the stomach, excepting rosewater, the older the more efficacious in its property to remove the malady.  Wherever zahur morah was not available, secun-gebeen[17] (syrup of vinegar) was administered with much the same effect.  The person once attacked, although the symptoms should have subsided by this application, is rigidly deprived of nourishment for two or three days, and even longer if deemed expedient; occasionally allowing only a small quantity of rose-water, which they say effectually removes from the stomach and bowels those corrupt adhesions which, in their opinion, is the primary cause of the complaint.