Cho led ology

[Gr. chole, and logos, a discourse.] (Med.) A treatise on the bile and biliary organs. Cholee'chel, an island of S. America, in the Argentine Confederation, 220 m. from Carinen. It is formed by the Choler, ( kol'er.) n. The bile. - Irascibility; ill-humor: anger: irritation of the pa ions; - formerly supposed to proceed from exce or acrimony of bile. Rio Negro. "It engenders choler , planteth anger."-Shaks. Cholera, ( kol'e - ra,) n. [Gr., from chote , bile, and rheo, to flow.] ( Med . ) The Cholera-morbus, or sporadic C. is a disease accompanied by vomiting and purging, with great pain and debility. It generally commences with a sense of pain about the bowels, fever, thirst, an irregular pulse, and severe vomiting and purging of bilious matter; in favorable cases these symptoms subside in a few days with the aid of proper remedies, but in severe cases great exhaustion ensues, attended by depre ion, anxiety, hurried respiration, cold sweats, hiccup, low and fluttering pulse, ., and patients rapidly sink.-C. ASIATIC. The term Asiatic or Spasmodic C. has been applied to a most appalling form of pestilential disease, which seems to have been but indistinctly known prior to the year 1817. It made its appearance in Aug. that year at Je ore, after having previously raged to a formidable extent in the south of Bengal, and thence it spread over a great part of Asia, carrying off millions of human beings. In 1823 it broke out at Astrakhan, but did not at that time extend farther into Ru ia; in 1828, however, it appeared at Orenburg, and during the autumn of that year and spring of 1829 it spread over a considerable part of the Ru ian dominions. It raged at Moscow in Sept., 1830; and having been apparently carried by the Ru ian army into Poland, it propagated itself through different parts of Europe in 1832, and first appeared on this side of the Atlantic at Quebec, June 2, 1832, and in New York, June 21, rapidly reaching most of the U. States. In 1834, 1849, 1850, and 1854, it revisited this country, since which time it cannot be said to have reigned epidemically here, though it reappeared frequently in Europe. It usually begins with sickne and purging; the discharge in this case not being bilious, but a thin colorle fluid like rice-water, accompanied with great prostration of strength and cold clammy sweats. In a short time dreadful cramps a ail the extremities and afterwards the abdomen, and other parts of the body; the body becomes bent, the limbs twisted, the countenance cadaverous, the pulse almost imperceptible, the eyes sunken and surrounded by a dark circle, the patient sinks into a state of apathy, and, unle a favorable change speedily takes place, he soon expires. With reaction, the pulse and natural warmth gradually return, and the spasms cease. Frequently the reaction is accompanied by fever, closely resembling typhus, and which is often fatal in from 4 to 8 days. C. is a form of blood poisoning, it derives its deadly quality from the swift proce by which it devitalizes the blood; when the disease runs its full course the blood becomes deprived of serum, without that, it clots, decomposes, and death ensues. C. is a disease of the bowels in so far as the lost serum reaches that part of the body, producing certain local symptoms, but its true seat is in the blood. In 1885 Dr. Koch, a German chemist, conducted a series of experiments resulting in the discovery of a microbe, or minute organism, to whose presence in the ti ues he attributed the disease, which he succeeded in producing by inoculation with this germ. Within recent years, as in the cholera outbreak in Europe in the summers of 1893 and 1894, quarantine has prevented its spread, and this once dreaded scourge seems now under control, particularly as its germs seem to be conveyed by water, and infection can be avoided by the use of purified water only, as was proved during the recent severe outbreak at Hamburg.