Address to the Inhabitants of Rugby about the Cholera Morbus

Friends and Fellow Townsmen,
A Meeting of the Inhabitants of this town has been called to consider the best means of saving us from the attacks of the Cholera Morbus , which has overrun so many parts of Europe. You will be likely to hear a great deal about this disorder, and you will naturally be anxious to learn about it. The following is the best account of it that I have been able to collect, and I give it you, without either making more or less of it than the truth will warrant.
CHOLERA MORBUS means in English “a disease of the bile.” Those common bowel complaints which occur every Autumn are instances of Cholera; the bile is out of order, and the natural action of the bowels becomes disordered. But the Cholera which has been so much talked of on the Continent of Europe is called Spasmodic Cholera, that is “a disease of the bile attended with spasms or cramps.” To say the truth however, it does not appear that Cholera is a very proper name for it; for it seems much more a disease of the blood than of the bile. It is 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, and therefore there is a great feeling of weight and pressure about the heart and chest. The powers of life seem palsied, the legs and belly become cold and cramped, and the pulse so weak that you can scarcely feel it. A man dies of the disorder keeping his senses to the last generally within twenty-four hours, unless you can succeed in restoring the natural action of the blood, and so relieving him from the cramps, and chills, and oppression under which he had laboured.
This is a new disorder in this part of the world, and one asks naturally how and where it first broke out. It was first observed at a place called Jessore in India, about a hundred miles north east of Calcutta. This was in August, 1817, that is, more than fourteen years ago. How it arose, nobody can certainly tell. Some say that the rice on which the natives chiefly live, was very bad that year, and bred the disorder in those who ate it. But however this be, the disease has ever since been travelling about in various directions in Asia, till in the Autumn of last year, 1830, it made its appearance in Europe, and broke out at Moscow in Russia towards the end of September. From thence in the present year it has spread to St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire; to Berlin, the capital of Prussia; to Vienna, the capital of Austria; and latterly to Hamburg, in Germany, a great city near the mouth of the river Elbe, opposite to the eastern coast of England. It is now said to have crossed over to England within the last week, and to have appeared at Sunderland, in Durham, and at Newcastle upon Tyne, in Northumberland.