Chapter MOORUM to MORT-DE-CHIEN of M by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

which raged in the Camp of Aurangzib at Bijapur in 1689, is called so. But in the history of Khafi Khan (Elliot, vii. 337) the general phrases ta’un and waba are used in reference to this disease, whilst the description is that of bubonic plague.

1781.—“Early in the morning of the 21st June (1781) we had two men seized with the mort-de-chien.”—Curtis, Diseases of India, 3rd ed., Edinb., 1807.

1782.—“Les indigestions appellées dans l’Inde Mort-de-chien, sont fréquentes. Les Castes qui mangent de la viande, nourriture trop pesante pour un climat si chaud, en sont souvent attaquées.…”—Sonnerat, i. 205. This author writes just after having described two epidemics of cholera under the name of Flux aigu. He did not apprehend that this was in fact the real Mort-de-chien.

1783.—“A disease generally called ‘Mort- de-chien’ at this time (during the defence of Onore) raged with great violence among the native inhabitants.”—Forbes, Or. Mem. iv. 122.

1796.—“Far more dreadful are the consequences of the above-mentioned intestinal colic, called by the Indians shani, mordexim and also Nircomben. It is occasioned, as I have said, by the winds blowing from the mountains…the consequence is that malignant and bilious slimy matter adheres to the bowels, and occasions violent pains, vomiting, fevers, and stupefaction; so that persons attacked with the disease die very often in a few hours. It sometimes happens that 30 or 40 persons die in this manner, in one place, in the course of the day.…In the year 1782 this disease raged with so much fury that a great many persons died of it.”—Fra Paolino, E.T. 409–410 (orig. see p. 353). As to the names used by Fra Paolino, for his Shani or Ciani, we find nothing nearer than Tamil and Mal. sanni, ‘convulsion, paralysis.’ (Winslow in his Tamil Dict. specifies 13 kinds of sanni. Komben is explained as ‘a kind of cholera or smallpox’ (!); and nir-komben (‘water-k.’) as a kind of cholera or bilious diarrhœa.) Paolino adds: “La droga amara costa assai, e non si poteva amministrare a tanti miserabili che perivano. Adunque in mancanza di questa droga amara noi distillasimo in Tàgara, o acqua vite di coco, molto sterco di cavalli (!), c l’amministrammo agl’ infermi. Tutti quelli che prendevano questa guarivano.”

1808.—“Morchee or Mortshee (Guz.) and Môdee (Mah.). A morbid affection in which the symptoms are convulsive action, followed by evacuations of the first passage up and down, with intolerable tenesmus, or twisting- like sensation in the intestines, corresponding remarkably with the choleramorbus of European synopsists, called by the country people in England (?) mortisheen, and by others mord-du-chien and Maua des chienes, as if it had come from France.”—R. Drummond, Illustrations, &c. A curious notice; and the author was, we presume, from his title of “Dr.,” a medical man. We suppose for England above should be read India.

The next quotation is the latest instance of the familiar use of the word that we have met with:

1812.—“General M— was taken very ill three or four days ago; a kind of fit— mort de chien—the doctor said, brought on by eating too many radishes.”—Original Familiar Correspondence between Residents in India, &c., Edinburgh, 1846, p. 287.

1813.—“Mort de chien is nothing more than the highest degree of Cholera Morbus.”—Johnson, Infl. of Tropical Climate, 405.

The second of the following quotations evidently refers to the outbreak of cholera mentioned, after Macpherson, in the next paragraph.

1780.—“I am once or twice a year (!) subject to violent attacks of cholera morbus, here called mort- de-chien.…”—Impey to Dunning, quoted by Sir James Stephen, ii. 339.

1781.—“The Plague is now broke out in Bengal, and rages with great violence; it has swept away already above 4000 persons. 200 or upwards have been buried in the different Portuguese churches within a few days.”—Hicky’s Bengal Gazette, April 21.

These quotations show that cholera, whether as an epidemic or as sporadic disease, is no new thing in India. Almost in the beginning of the Portuguese expeditions to the East we find apparent examples of the visitations of this terrible scourge, though no precise name is given in the narratives. Thus we read in the Life of Giovanni da Emboli, an adventurous young Florentine who served with the Portuguese, that, arriving in China in 1517, the ships’ crews were attacked by a pessima malatia di frusso (virulent flux) of such kind that there died thereof about 70 men, and among these Giovanni himself, and two other Florentines (Vita, in Archiv. Stor. Ital. 33). Correa says that, in 1503, 20,000 men died of a like disease in the army of the Zamorin. We have given above Correa’s description of the terrible Goa pest of 1543, which was most evidently cholera. Madras accounts, according to Macpherson, first mention the disease at Arcot in 1756, and there are frequent notices of it in that neighbourhood between 1763 and 1787. The Hon. R. Lindsay speaks of it as raging at Sylhet in 1781, after carrying off a number of the inhabitants of Calcutta (Macpherson, see the quotation of 1781 above). It also raged that year at Ganjam, and out of a division of 5000 Bengal troops under Col. Pearse, who were on the march