DUDLEY on Epidemic Cholera.



fore and during the epidemic, yet it was at no time so gene-
ral, as to constitute the characteristic condition of the popu-
lation. The ravages of the disease have been most extensive in
the black population, and among those of the whites who failed
to secure the advantages of nursing, appropriate food, and
professional attendance; yet among the easy and affluent,
those of sober and temperate habits, it has been attended by
great mortality, as has been observed in the obituary list.
The regular brandy drinker has been peculiarly fortunate.
The maintenance of his powers of digestion by the aid of
this stimulus, in almost every instance preserved him safe.
  Confiding too much in our great elevation above the beds
of our rivers, in the absence of all collections of water,
favorable to vegetable decomposition, and in the undulating
nature of the face of the surrounding country, it had been
presumed we should escape the consequences of the scourge.
The entire want of all those arrangements on the part of
the city authories to avert this evil, or to mitigate as far as
practicable, the consequences of the epidemic, added no lit-
tle to its fatality; but independent of all premonitions, and
of every arrangement that might have been made for its re-
ception, it came among us with a type so malignant, and its
march in the work of death was so rapid and unhesitating,
that extensive mortality was the inevitable result of its visit.
To compare the disease, as it existed here for the first twelve
days after its appearance, with what it has shown itself to be
in most other quarters of the United States, would be like
placing the tiger by the side of the lamb with a view to an
estimate of strength and danger.
  No remarkable variety of symptoms appeared in the dif-
ferent periods of the epidemic among us. Coldness of sur-
face, excessive perspiration, and spasms, were more charac-
teristic of the early, than of the latter period of its history.
Severe spasms, profuse perspiration, with an icy coldness of
the skin, characterised most of the fatal cases, I had an op-
portunity of seeing for the first twelve days. After that
time, death took place in many cases, without either cramps,



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