ER VII.

It may be inferred, from what I have stated at the close of my letter
of yesterday, that if a Commission be appointed, I look forward to its
being shewn, as clear as the sun at noon day, that the most complete
illusion has existed, and, on the part of many, still exists, with
regard to the term _Indian_ or _Asiatic_ cholera; for a form of cholera
possessing characters quite peculiar to the disease in that country, and
unknown, till very lately, in other countries, _has never existed
there_. Cholera, from a cause as inscrutable, perhaps, as the cause of
life itself, has prevailed there, and in other parts of the world, in
its severest forms, and to a greater extent than previously recorded;
but, whether we speak of the mild form, or of a severe form, proceeding
or not to the destruction of life, the symptoms have everywhere been
precisely the same. In this country it has been over and over again
remarked, that, so far back as 1669, the spasmodic cholera prevailed
epidemically under the observation of Dr. Sydenham, who records it. For
many years after the time of Dr. Cullen, who frequently promulgated
opinions founded on those of some fancy author rather than on his own
observation, it was very much the fashion to speak of redundancy of
bile, or of acrid bile, as the cause of the whole train of symptoms in
this disease; but, since the attention of medical men has been more
particularly drawn to the subject, practitioners may be found in every
town in England who can inform you that, in severe cases of cholera,
they have generally observed that no bile whatever has appeared till
the patient began to get better. Abundance of cases of this kind are
furnished by the different medical journals of this year. In fifty-two
cases of cholera which passed under my observation in the year 1828, the
_absence_ of bile was always most remarkable. I made my observations
with extraordinary care. One of the cases proved fatal, in which the
group of symptoms deemed characteristic of the Indian or Indo-Russian
cholera, was most perfect, and in the mass, the symptoms were as
aggravated as they have often been observed to be in India;--in several,
spasms, coldness of the body, and even convulsions, having been present.

To those who have attended to the subject of cholera, nothing can be
more absurd than to hear people say such or such a case cannot be _the
true_ cholera, or the Indian cholera, or the Russian cholera, because
_all_