As occurred in the epidemics of which we have spoken, and as has been observed in former times, and noted by Rivére, Senertus, Sydenham, Loes, Huxham, and many others, a remarkable analogy was noticed between the ‘medical constitution’ which had existed for some months past, and the development of this epidemic. All authors who have given descriptions of catarrhal epidemics similar to that of which we are writing, agree in saying that they have almost invariably followed cold and moist seasons, and that they seemed more immediately to be produced by sudden atmospheric vicissitudes.
These facts harmonize with those observed in Paris. The malady commenced with symptoms of coryza, attended by cough and snuffling; dyspnea, with severe bronchial irritation, supervened, when the paroxysm all at once became greatly aggravated. One symptom was remarked as being pretty general and prominent, viz., a feeling of lassitude and fatigue of the limbs, with more or less great moral prostration: the disease was not very fatal, and generally lasted for eight or ten days. During this period an extraordinary epidemic prevailed at a village called Mandroros, in Russia,—gangrene of the spleen. From the singular nature of this disease, a description will probably be found interesting. It commenced without any premonitory symptoms; the patient was suddenly seized with a feeling of burning at the pit of the stomach, accompanied by an insupportable pain in the left hypochondria; lassitude, with vomiting of a greenish bitter fluid, bowels naturally active, urine scanty, loss of appetite, and laborious respiration. Putrid appearances supervened in the course of a few hours, followed by meteorismus, borborygmi, yellowness of the skin, and of the scleroticæ; facies Hippocratica, cramps, cold extremities, and death. This disease, it is said, was not contagious, but epidemic, and it is further stated to have resembled that which was called ‘the plague of Siberia.’ After death, decomposition of the corpses took place rapidly, a black spot first appearing over the splenic region. Necrotomy showed the spleen in an engorged and gangrenous condition.
In October, 1831, cholera made its appearance in Sunderland, and a month after in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; it visited Houghton-le-Spring, North Shields, Tynemouth, South Shields, Gateshead, and other places. The first appearance of it in London is reported to have taken place in the following year, 1832, in the month of February, in the immediate vicinity of the shipping; but solitary cases were met with in the close filthy quarters of the very poor, early in December. In Scotland it had made its appearance previously about Christmas; and in the following January, Leith and Edinburgh suffered greatly. During this period it broke out in France, Holland, and in the peninsula generally. In the summer of 1832 cholera prevailed throughout England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and in the Channel Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, &c., and also among the emigrants arriving at Quebec; from the latter city it extended to Montreal, Kingston on the Lake Ontario, and to the surrounding neighbourhood. Soon afterwards, New York and Albany, in the United States, were attacked, and in due time the disease extended to Philadelphia, to Newcastle on the Delaware river, and to many other parts of the United States; it raged at New Orleans, as did also yellow fever: it made its appearance at the Havannah in the month of July, 1833. During the spring of that year influenza spread over every part of Great Britain and Ireland: it had raged previously in Russia and the northern parts of Germany, where it had inflicted great mortality in its course.
On the 26th of March, Paris was again invaded by cholera, and the inhabitants of Calais also suffered greatly; in Paris, at least 20,000 persons had fallen victims to this scourge by the end of September. During this year and the following, it raged throughout Spain, and was especially destructive in Madrid. Numerous places on the borders of the Mediterranean were visited by this pestilence, and it re-appeared in London and in other places in this country, as well as in North America.
From the year 1833 to 1838, plague raged with great violence, carrying off vast numbers, in Constantinople, Cairo, Alexandria, and Smyrna.
A.D. 1834, cholera was rife at Gibraltar; it extended to the rock, and no one seems to have escaped the disease. A singular phenomenon, a shower of fish, was noticed on the 17th of May in the neighbourhood of Allahabad. The zemindars of the village have furnished the following particulars, which were confirmed by other accounts:—About noon, the wind being from the west, and a few distant clouds visible, there was a blast of high wind accompanied with much dust, of a reddish yellow colour, with which the atmosphere was greatly charged. The blast appeared to extend in breadth about 400 yards; immense trees and large buildings were thrown down, and when the storm had passed away, the ground all about the village was found strewed with small fish to the extent of two bijahs: the fish were all of the chalwa species (clopea cultrata, Shakespeare Dictionary); they were a span or rather less in length, and from one sear to one and a half in weight; when found they were all dead and dry. The Jumna runs about three miles south of the village, and the Ganges fourteen W. by E. The fish were not fit for eating, and it was said that when put in the pan for dressing they turned into blood!
The writer of a history of cholera, published in the ‘Lancet,’ says: “From the earliest times it has been a matter of common observation that plagues and murrains among the lower animals not unfrequently either preceded or accompanied the visitations to which mankind were subjected. Thus, at the siege of Troy, we are told by Homer:
μετὰ δ’ ἰὸν ἔηκε·
Δεινὴ δὲ κλαγγὴ γένετ’ ἀργύρεοιο βιοῖο.
Οὐρῆας μὲν πρῶtον ἐπῴχετο, καὶ κύνας ἀργούς·