Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c16.13

c16.13

From the middle of July (the second month of the rainy season) there is little or no wind, a stagnation of air follows, and during the remainder of this month, and the months of August and September, the atmosphere is loaded with suffocating heat and moisture, the parents of putrefaction; and nervous putrid fevers (approaching sometimes to pestilential) take the lead, and mark the dangerous season; from these fevers the natives frequently recover, but the Europeans seldom, especially if they in the preceding May and June indulged too freely in those two bewitching delicacies, Mangoes and Mango Fish, indiscriminately with the free use of flesh and wine; for these (all together) load the whole habit with impurities, and never fail of yielding death a plentiful harvest, in the three last months of this putrid season: If any are seized with the smallpox in these months, it is ever of the most malignant kind, and usually fatal. It will not, I hope, be deemed a useless digression, if I bestow a few remarks on the nature of this Bengall fever.