Indian Antiquary Vol 60

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 300

96
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MAY, 1931
for near half an hour. About this time the Duan 50 received advices from Pettipolco 51 that au' English vessell was arrived at Chipplear 62 full of soldiers ; at the same time a letter from Governor Pitt that he would set the town on fire if he did not withdraw his people from the Factory. This Duan was then Nabob of the country. Yet he quaked for fear after an unaccountable manner and sent to the Factory in a begging manner to havo matters accommodated. 53
When the English first settled at Metchlepotan,5* before diseases were contracted from the punch bowle, or strong fiery spirits drunk upon empty stomachs to quencht the central heat, tis written the English dyed there as fast as rotten sheep, but after they found a way to bring winc from Persia, the lives of many of 'em were saved. In the year 1700 Sir William Norris, Consul Pitt35 and the New Company gentlemen brought out plenty of Florence 66 and the best of wines, but they unhappily chuseing rather to imitate the Romanes in the cleclineiny age of that Empire in drincking and eating all sorts of flesh and fish together, then the natives of Metchlepotan. Whoever would be an epicure, let him eat of that excellent salt fish and rice and drink cold water upon it, and by custome he will find it to rellish better then the nicest viande. Most of 'em were soon sent to their long homes. They dyed of intermitting fevers, dysenterys and impostumes in the liver.
Cort. Peru, 8 that admirable specifick, when rightly administred, fails here as seldome as any where of its desired effect and is also of great use in fluxes, 59 and in reality worth half the remedyes in an apothecarys shop. The inflamation of the liver is taken off and impostunations prevented by large phlebotony in the begining, so long as the patient is able to stand or stagger under 'em, and by starveing the disease out by a lowe dyet, after the same manner as in perfect rheumatismes. Their physicions were at first ignorant of the disease and its symptom, a pain in the right shoulder, till their Secretary, one of the last that dyed, 60 was opened.
Here it may be objected that several of the gentlemen lived moderately, and some by rule, yet dyed as soon as the others. To which may be answered, that every constitution will not admit of such a change, especialy in sickly places, as will inevitable happen from the climate it self. The curious machin is in imminent danger of being overthrown, because the bloud will putt on such a disposition as is suitable to the air and dyet of the place, espe. cially in young people, some of which suffers the fatigue in Madrass, the healthfullest place, three or fower years before the country becomes natural and their bodys assimilated there. unto. Those that are turned of forty, health is more steddy in them and they are subject to less chang. People live longer or shorter according to their temperament or proportion of the fower principal elements which compose punctus saliens, that minute origin of man. Adam had first a temperamentum ad pondus or parity of the quallitys given him, and after his fall such a mixture, by a physical chang, as kept fast the seeds of distempers for several hundred years, for certainly the Antidiluvian Fathers enjoyed a steddy state of health the greatest part of their life ; otherwise it will be hard to determine by physilogy1 how they lived so long, and as mankind was to increase and people the world, so birds and beasts were to stock it with their kind. Hence it may be concluded that they also had at first a temperament of long life given 'em when they were few in number and seldome lost their way in strang moun. taing, according to Virgil, who follows the Moisaical system in the formation of the universe,
Rara ignotas errent animalia montes.69 "The lofty mountains feed the savage race, Yet few and strangers, in th'unpeopl'd place."63
DRYDEN. It was customary to goe to Mada pollam as soon as any where seized with a violent disease which was usually found the best remedy, the air there being pure, sweet, and free from saline particles and such pernicious ones as the other place is sometimes stuffed with, and much cooler, from the fine soly * dureing the land winds, then tis at any settlement on the Const. The desart and sandy ground to the westward of Madrass and Fort St. David, 66 and barren