Transcribed from the [1831] Rowell and Son edition by David Price. Many thanks to the British Library for making their copy available. ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS OF RUGBY ABOUT THE CHOLERA MORBUS. * * * * * FRIENDS AND FELLOW TOWNSMEN, A Meeting of the Inhabitants of this town has been called to consider the best means of saving us from the attacks of the _Cholera Morbus_, which has overrun so many parts of Europe. You will be likely to hear a great deal about this disorder, and you will naturally be anxious to learn about it. The following is the best account of it that I have been able to collect, and I give it you, without either making more or less of it than the truth will warrant. * * * * * CHOLERA MORBUS means in English “a disease of the bile.” Those common bowel complaints which occur every Autumn are instances of CHOLERA; the bile is out of order, and the natural action of the bowels becomes disordered. But the CHOLERA which has been so much talked of on the Continent of Europe is called SPASMODIC CHOLERA, that is “a disease of the bile attended with spasms or cramps.” To say the truth however, it does not appear that CHOLERA is a very proper name for it; for it seems much more a disease of the blood than of the bile. It is by no means always accompanied with disorder in the bowels, but it is as if a man’s life blood were suddenly poisoned; as if it were choked up so that it could not flow freely, and therefore there is a great feeling of weight and pressure about the heart and chest. The powers of life seem palsied, the legs and belly become cold and cramped, and the pulse so weak that you can scarcely feel it. A man dies of the disorder keeping his senses to the last generally within twenty-four hours, unless you can succeed in restoring the natural action of the blood, and so relieving him from the cramps, and chills, and oppression under which he had laboured.