La civilisation et le choléra / par Jules Girette.

  • Girette, Jules.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: La civilisation et le choléra / par Jules Girette. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    310/396 (page 288)
    E. N° 2. — Pèlerinage de Punderpoor. Naissance de l’épidémie. (Dans le rapport de M. Netten RedclifTe sur la diffusion actuelle du choléra en Europe (Appendix to the Lighlh Report of the medi- cal officer of the Privy Council, 1865, p. 372 et a73), on trouve confirmée l’opinion admise par la Conférence sanitaire interna- tionale que les pèlerinages sont dans l’Inde la plus puissante des causes de [la propagation du choléra. Un récit emprunté à un té- moin oculaire, le révérend Adam White (victime lui-même du choléra), donne sur le pèlerinage de Punderpoor (Présidence de Bombay)en 1863, des renseignements précis qui m’ont paru mé- riter d’être reproduits. — J. G.) “I paid my annual visit to Punderpoor in November 1863. Great multitudes from ail parts of the country corne at that season, somelimes from incredile distance, to the shrine of the shrine of Vithoba... In a flowing stream, in thouthands, they pass on to the shrine rom every direction ; weary and worn they then encamp near the town mostly in the bed of the river. Some hâve tents, some light cloth sheds, many nothing at ail, to protect them. First cornes a day of fasting, distin- guished by eating either nothing or else unwholesome trash, and by shouting forth by day and by night, with clang ofcym- bals, and violent gesticulations up to the last ebb of strength, the names of Vithoba and bis wife and their ‘saints.’ Add to this that the whole atmosphère becomes frightfully tainted from the first, so thaï one cannot walk anywhere, far or near, without being sensible of the most sickening odours. Gan it be wondered at that choiera is very often generated at the place? But the peculiar seed-plot where that pestilence germi- nates remains to be described. It is believed that it is the vevy temple of Vithoba itself, a small stone room, with no aperture but a small door, into which perhaps 50 000 persons in the course of a few days force their way, and in the immédiate