ABSTRACT
Cholera is a disease of the bowels' turning to water, and the water being discharged from both ends of the alimentary tract by vomiting and diarrhoea, mainly by diarrhoea. Premonitory symptoms are rare, and the onset of the disease is generally abrupt, with diarrhoea and vomiting sometimes even occurring in sleep, usually some hours after the last meal, when the stomach and small intestines are empty. There is some disagreement about cholera's antiquity and about its homeland. De, one of India's noted cholera investigators maintains that cholera is—or rather, was—not an exclusively Asiatic disease. When cholera struck Britain for the second time, in 1853, the incomparable John Snow, in his spare time from doing research on anaesthetics and applying the knowledge thus gained on Queen Victoria and other patients, showed that the cholera "poison" was of a particulate nature carried from one person to another by being swallowed and increasing in the alimentary tract.
