Southern Planter

Whole	Number.	Spasmodic	Cholera
August 2d,	81	56
3d,	61	38
4th,	92	52

The northern mails due on Saturday, were received yesterday morning, and brought New York papers to the evening of the 4th of August. The cholera news is rather favorable than otherwise; though the report of the board of health exhibits a larger number of new cases and deaths on the 4th, than the two preceding days. On the 4th of August there were reported,
New cases. Deaths.
2d, 81 24
3d, do. 87 24
4th, do. 88 30
The report of interments of persons stated to have died of spasmodic cholera, makes the number of deaths considerably larger, on each of those days, than the foregoing statement. It is difficult to account for the discrepancy, or to determine which report may be relied upon as the more authentic. The reports of interment exhibits the following result:
At Brooklyn, on the 3d of August, there were new cases, 13, deaths 5.
Sing Sing Prison.—The number of new cases at Sing Sing Prison, on the 1st instant, was 15—deaths, 5. On the 2d 17 new cases and 6 deaths, of which four were by cholera. There were on the sick list, 206 prisoners, of whom 60 were of cholera. New cases of the cholera on the 3d, fourteen, deaths, seven.
Notwithstanding the apparent relaxation of this most fatal epidemic in the city of New York, its ravages are rapidly extending themselves to other, and distant places. Thus:
Albany, August 1.—New cases, 32, deaths, 8.
August 2, new cases, 19; deaths, 7.
Troy, Aug. 3d.—The board of health report an increased number of cases within three days, and four deaths by cholera.
Oswego, July 30.—1 case, which resulted fatally.
Johnstown.—There have been in the poor house at Johnstown, 9 cases and 4 deaths, of cholera.
Syracuse, July 31.—Since the 24th, 2 cases, 1 death.
Rochester, July 28.—6 cases, 3 deaths. July 29, 11 cases, 5 deaths.
Mendon, July 29.—1 case, a stage driver, from Rochester, dead.
Lockport, July 26.—1 case. 28th, 1 do.
Buffalo, July 30.—For 24 hours, 13 cases and 3 deaths.
Providence, R. I. Aug. 1.—Four cases of cholera, (two adults, Mr. and Mrs. Thurber, and two children,) are announced by the board of health in this city. All of these cases occurred in the same house, which is situated in Field street on Eddy's Point on the west side of the river, and its location is said to be a healthy one. There had been no communication between the inmates of the house, and any individual from New York or other places where the cholera prevails, or has prevailed. All the persons attacked have died. August 1, no new cases.
Newark August 2.—1 case, a child, dead. Aug. 3, 1 case.
Elizabethtown,—The board of health of Elizabethtown reported on Tuesday five cases and three deaths.
The Philadelphia board of health reported
New Cases. Deaths.
August 3d, 35 14
4th, 45 13
from which it would appear the cholera is rather increasing than diminishing in that city.
It still exists at Norfolk and Portsmouth; several new cases and deaths having occurred on the 2d and 3d instant.
A letter from Moses Hart, supposed intendant of Trois Rivieres, Lower Canada, to the Health Commissioners of Boston, dated June 30, has been communicated by the Mayor. It was as follows:
THE CREATOR EMPLOYS SULPHUR TO PURIFY THE AIR.
Preventive and cure for the Asiatic Cholera Morbus.
Take a tea-spoonful of Sulphur in a little Molasses, three times a week, and wear brimstone.
Burning brimstone in the open air will destroy the Cholera.
When a person is attacked, drink copiously of warm rain water sulphurated with the acid, or if neither are at hand, warm water, sweetened.
By this simple mode only two deaths occurred in this town, midway between Quebec and Montreal, where upwards of three thousand have died, by taking brandy and opium instead of water, and burning tar, instead of brimstone.
MOSES HART.
It was stated in the board, that Trois Rivieres was the only place between Montreal and Quebec, that had escaped the ravages of the Cholera. It has three or four thousand inhabitants.
Cholera in Holland.—The last accounts from London state that the steamboat Batavia had arrived there from Holland, with intelligence that the Cholera had at length made its appearance in that country.
From the Cholera Gazette.
EARLY HISTORY OF CHOLERA.
Cholera is a disease that has been known from the earliest periods, and has been described by the father of our art. In every country sporadic cases of it occur, and in not a few instances it has existed epidemically.
In 1762 it prevailed very extensively in upper Hindostan, destroyed, according to Le Bugue de Presle, thirty thousand negroes, and eight hundred Europeans. Dr. Palsy, in a letter from Madras in 1774, states that it was often epidemic, especially among the blacks. M. Sonnerat, in the account of his travels in India, between the years of 1774 and 1781, mentions that Cholera prevailed on the Coromandel coast, and at one period more particularly, assumed epidemic and malignant character. Curtis, in his work on the diseases of India, and Gilchrist, in his essay on the spasmodic affections of that country, speak of an unusual prevalence of the disease in 1781 and 1782. It prevailed in the northern Circars in the early part of 1781, and in the latter end of March, it affected at Ganjam, a division of Bengal troops, consisting of five thousand men, who were proceeding under the command of Col. Pearse, of the artillery, to join Sir Eyre Coote's army on the coast. Men previously in perfect health dropped down by dozens, and those even less severely affected, were generally dead, or past recovery within less than an hour. Above five hundred were admitted into the hospital in one day, and in three days, more than half the army were affected.
In April 1783, it broke out at Hurdwar, on the Ganges, a spot held peculiarly sacred by the Hindoos, among a crowd of between one and two millions of persons assembled for the purpose of ablution in the holy stream. It is the custom of the pilgrims to repair to the bed of the river, where they pass the night with little, if any shelter. Very soon after the commencement of the ceremonies, the cholera attacked the pilgrims, and in less than eight days, is supposed to have cut off twenty thousand of them. The disease was, however, on this occasion so confined in its influence, as not to reach the village of Jawalpore, only seven miles distant.
We have accounts of the disease having also prevailed at different periods in various parts of Europe. It has been very extensively prevalent in Paris at various periods, particularly during the summer of 1730, and in July, 1780. Sydenham notices its general occurrence in London 1676, and Huxham in 1741. Dr. Ayre states, that it was epidemic in 1817 in Hull and other parts of Great Britain; and in 1825 it was, according to Doctor Thackrah, epidemic in the town and neighborhood of Leeds, and affected nearly one half of the inhabitants. So completely did this last epidemic present the characters of the present one, that when Dr. Johnson read to the Westminster Medical Society, Dr. Thackrah's account of it, omitting the name of the place and the period of its prevalence, it was at once pronounced to be a most accurate description of the disease then existing in London. We have no certain accounts, however, of the disease ever before having been epidemic over so large a space as the present one.