Pestilential cholera commenced and committed great ravages, especially in India, where it prevailed with an intensity and fatality equal to those of a similar malady which was fatal to thousands of the human race A.D. 260. This pestilence broke out in the month of August, it is said, at a place called Jessore, a populous town in the centre of the Delta of the Ganges, the capital of the Sunderbunds, distant from Calcutta about sixty English miles, and there it caused great mortality, proving fatal to almost all on whom it seized. Jessore is described as being a crowded, filthy place, surrounded by impenetrable and marshy jungles, and consequently exposed to all the horrors of a malarious and ill-ventilated atmosphere. In the course of a few weeks, 10,000 of the inhabitants perished in this district only. In the September following, it broke out in Calcutta, where it committed great ravages. It spread thence along the banks of the Ganges in a north-westerly direction, not then extending further to the east than Muzufferpore. It also attacked with great violence the English army assembled in Bundelcund, under the Marquess of Hastings, on the banks of the Sinde, in the most central part of India. Five thousand men perished between the 15th and 20th of November, 9000 of the troops dying altogether during this attack of the epidemic. The roads were covered with the dying and the dead.
A.D. 1818. This dreadful epidemic extended to Jaulnah, on the Madras side of the Indian peninsula, and in August of the same year it reached Bombay; in fact, it may be said to have extended itself to every part of India, and to many of the neighbouring countries, which are to this day suffering from it, but in a mitigated degree. In March, 10,000 perished from it in Banda and its environs. Hutta, Saugur, Ougein, and Kotah also suffered in a similar proportion. An equal number died of cholera in the same month in Allahabad. In April and May, Cawnpore, Meerhut, Agra, and Delhi were attacked, and the disease raged in these towns with great severity. About the same time, Lucknow and Fyzabad, cities in Oude, were ravaged by it, and 30,000 perished in Goruckpore alone. In October, the disease broke out in Madras, and in Ceylon in the following December. During this period, it proved very destructive to the inhabitants of the Mauritius, raged violently in the Burmese Empire, in the kingdom of Aracan, and in the peninsula of Molucca. Yellow pestilence also raged at the same time in the United States, and continued the two following years, 1819 and 1820, carrying off great numbers in many of the States, especially in New York and Philadelphia; it was also rife in the West Indian Islands, in Bermuda, in British Guiana, and in various parts of the South American continent.
The year 1819 was marked by great commotions of the elements, and a general spread of epidemic pestilence all over the world; its prevalence was remarked in all the four quarters of the globe, each portion having been visited by the forms of disease peculiar to its several climates. A tract of country, the Ullah-Bund, in the Delta of the Indus, extending nearly fifty miles in length and sixteen in breadth, was upheaved ten feet; while adjoining districts were depressed, and the features of the Delta completely altered. The island of Penang, Sumatra, Singapore, the kingdom of Siam, and the isles of France and Bourbon were infected with pestilential cholera. In the single town of Bankok, the capital of Siam, 40,000 persons perished by this dire destruction.
During the year 1820 cholera extended to Tonquin, Cambogia, Cochin-China, Southern China, Canton, the Philippines, &c.
A.D. 1821, Xeres was visited by yellow pestilence; the British troops suffered severely, and the civilians in greater proportion; it prevailed also with great destruction at Cadiz, a city which had suffered between the years 1800 and 1821, from eleven epidemic pestilences of a similar type. (Vide Professor Salva, of Barcelona, on Yellow Fever.)—Sir James Fellows, in his reports on the pestilential disorders of Andalusia during these years, asserts, as before remarked, that the air from its stagnant state became so vitiated that its noxious qualities affected even dumb animals. The winter in America this year was mild until the end of December; the spring was wet and cold, and the summer dry and sultry, with uncommon heat; all vegetable productions seemed to wither, and the drought was so great that the wells or springs were dried up; the thermometer rose to 90° and 100° in May; and intermittent, remittent and bilious fevers, with dysenteries, prevailed in the swampy districts. In the month of August, yellow pestilence made its appearance at New York, and was soon rife at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and at Charleston; it was also prevalent at New Orleans, Natchez, Mobile, Alabama, and the Havannah, and extended along the low banks of the Mississippi river. From this period until 1822, the disease, although diminished in severity, yet carried off great numbers in the various districts.
Destructive cholera, which may be said not to have subsided at all, visited, this year, 1821, the island of Java, Bantam, Mendura, Borneo, and various other parts in the Indian Archipelago. In Java it is reported that 102,000 persons were carried off by it, 17,000 of whom belonged to the town of Batavia, one of the most unhealthy towns in the East. This same year, this dreadful pestilence, in the month of July, reached Muscat in Arabia, in its western course, where 10,000 persons lost their lives, and during the remainder of the year committed great ravages in various places in the Persian Gulf. In the following month, August, it appeared in Persia, and raged with violence at Bassora and at Baghdad. In Bassora, 18,000 lives, being one-third of the population, were sacrificed in eleven days, and a similarly fearful destruction befel Baghdad. In Bushire, where it broke out in July, 1821, its ravages were most fearful. The bazaars were closed, the houses abandoned, the unburied dead lay in heaps in the streets, and the surviving population sought safety in flight. In Shiraz one-eighth of the population perished.
In the years 1822–24, it revisited Tonquin and also Pekin, Central and Northern China, the Moluccas or Spice Islands, Amboyna, Macassar, Assam, and most of the other eastern countries. In Ispahan the epidemic did not inflict much damage, but at Erzeroom it attacked the army of the victorious Abbas Mirza, and swept his ranks from front to rear, the terror-stricken soldiery throwing away their arms, and flying from before the invisible destroyer. During these years, 1822–24, extending to 1827–29–30, this pestilence prevailed in many of the principal cities of Persia, and also in Chinese Tartary: it ravaged most of the populous cities of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Judæa, and reached within 150 miles of the Georgian frontiers of Russia: it was also rife at Orenburg and Astrachan, beyond which it seems not to have extended until the years 1828–29, when it appeared at Orenburg, the capital of the province of that name, situated on the Tartar frontier, 400 miles north of the Caspian Sea. During this period, disease was rife in various other parts of the world.
There was a great scarcity, A.D. 1822, and epidemic typhus prevailed to a great extent in the west of Ireland, involving other parts of that unfortunate country. An awful earthquake occurred about this period at Chili, by which an immense tract of ground, 1000 square miles, was elevated from two to six feet above its original level, and a great part of the bottom of the sea remained bare and dry at high water, with beds of oysters, mussels, and other shellfish adhering to the rocks on which they grew. The fish being all dead, and exhaling most offensive effluvia, disease consequently ensued. Ordinary typhus prevailed in Paris, during which time many cases of spasmodic yellow fever, as it was termed, were observed.
A.D. 1823, the Laplanders are stated to have suffered greatly in their cattle from murrain; upwards of 5000 head were carried off,—wolves even being destroyed by it, so intense and general among the lower animals was the distemper. Yellow fever this year prevailed in Lisbon and in the Island of Ascension, and also in various settlements on the African coast, especially at Sierra Leone. The two years following, 1824–25, pestilence was rife in Lisbon. Yellow pestilence, in the latter year, devastated many places on the coast of South America, especially in the Brazils. Yellow fever prevailed at Rio de Janeiro. The drought was excessive, but was succeeded by heavy rains, common in this quarter of the globe. At one settlement alone, Aracaty, the mortality in a short time was estimated at 30,000. Great numbers died during their efforts to reach the coast for water; wild as well as domestic animals perished. The drought, with its attendant misery and deadliness, was so great, that to this day the inhabitants speak of the calamity with horror. About this period, small-pox committed great ravages in Hamburgh; and at Grand Cairo 30,000 persons died of pestilence.
A.D. 1826, epidemic typhus prevailed all over Ireland, and caused great mortality. Dr. Graves, in his Lectures, refers to very many well-marked cases of yellow fever. He says, “We have had this year numerous cases which in their symptoms and their morbid anatomy agree essentially with yellow fever,—yellow skin, black vomit, &c.”