“Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East India dominions, is annually subject to a fatal and consuming sickness. Here the Dutch, in attempting to make this, their capital in India, resemble their cities in Europe, have adorned it with canals or ditches, intersecting each other, running through every part of it. Notwithstanding the utmost care to keep these clean, during the rainy season, and after it, they become extremely noxious to the inhabitants, but especially to strangers. It has been remarked, that the sickness rages with the greatest violence when the rains have abated, and the sun has evaporated the water in the ditches, so that the mud begins to appear. This happened in 1764, when some British ships of war had occasion to stay for a little time at Batavia. The stench from the mud was intolerable; the fever was of the remitting kind; some were suddenly seized with a delirium, and died in the first fit; but none survived the attack of a third. Nor was the sickness at that time confined to the ships; the whole city afforded a scene of disease and death; streets covered with funerals, bells tolling from morning to night, and horses jaded with dragging the dead in herses to their graves. At that time a slight cut of the skin, the least scratch of a nail, or the most inconsiderable wound, turned quickly into a putrid, spreading ulcer, which, in twenty-four hours, consumed the flesh, even to the bone. Besides these malignant and remitting fevers, which rage during the wet season in the unhealthy parts of the East Indies, Europeans, especially such as live intemperately, are also subject to fluxes, and to an inflammation, or disease of the liver; which last is almost peculiar to India, and particularly to the Coromandel coast.”