The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 40, July 1936 - April, 1937 Page: 219
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Epidemic Cholera in Texas, 1833-1834 219
the state to the heads of families. He further ordered the dis-
tribution of the necessary peyote.7
The most important of these prescriptions had been discovered
accidentally in Monterrey. Dr. Ignacio Sendejas, who was in charge
of a hospital in that city, selected and tried the most reasonable
prescriptions from among a great number offered him during the
first attacks of the epidemic. The results were fatal in every case.
Patients usually died within five hours after entering the hospital.
In desperation, Dr. Sendejas went about the city in search of a
enough."-Quoted in the Democratic Telegraph and Texas Register, Janu-
ary 18, 1849. Still another prescription was the use of "calomel, pepper-
mint, asafoetida, tobacco, aloes, camphor, garlic &c. Some to be taken
into the stomach, and others administered in poultices and injections."-
Northern Standard, February 24, 1849. A correspondent of the London
Times quoted a remedy used in Kioffe, Russia; it consisted of "one
glass and a half of spirits of wine in a glass of water, with four or
five teaspoonfuls of powdered charcoal and three drops of oil of mint,
and the patient took violent exercise until strong perspiration was in-
duced."-Quoted in the Northern Standard, February 24, 1849. Dr. A.
G. Goodlet, Late Surgeon of the 7th Regiment, writing in the Nacogdoches
Times, June 2, 1849, gives his version of the cause and cure of cholera
as follows: "That the disease is conveyed in the atmosphere there seems
to be no reason to doubt, or that it is wafted in currents.-There is lit-
tle reason to dispute that it attacks those who are predisposed to it by
their containing in their system matter or air of a similar nature with
that floating in the atmosphere. We find the negro more subject to it
than the white man;-the white man more than the white woman. The
negro has more nitrogen and less oxygen about his person than the
white man. It is the superabundance of nitrogen which I take to be
nearly allied to the remote cause of cholera. . . . [To the patient] we
give strong tincture of cinnamon, say a teaspoonful or so every half
hour (this tincture should be made of the bark). We then strip the
patient and throw the coldest water we have over the whole body, hastily
wipe dry, and put into blankets to be allowed to sweat: give him or her
a little well-boiled corn meal gruel. The cold water coming in contact
with the nitrogen on the body it forms a neutral; the cramps are in-
stantly dissipated, and the regular circulation returns; the patient is
cured." Dr. John W. Moore, writing in a Mobile, Alabama, newspaper
claimed that he had cured one hundred cases of cholera with enemas of
tobacco.-Quoted in The Texas Democrat, June 16, 1849. A specific for
cholera was announced in Chicago in 1849. It consisted of pills of
sulphur mixed with powdered charcoal.-Texas Democrat, July 14, 1849.
'Peyote, peiotl..-[Lophophora Williamsii and Anhalonium Lewinii]. A
plant of the cactus family known as "mescal buttons." During the Civil
War the Texas Rangers used nescal buttons, or "white mule," as they
called it, soaked in water as an intoxicant whenever the customary drink
was not available. For a scholarly treatise, with an extensive bibliog-
raphy, on the peyote plant, see Jose Ramirez, Estudios de Historia Nat-
ural, Mexico, Imprenta de la Secretaria de Fomento, 1904. For authentic
and interesting accounts of the ceremonial and religious rites performed
by Mexican Indians in "capturing" and using the plant, see Carl Lum-
holtz: El Mxico, Desconocido, Vol. I, Chap. XIX, Vol. II, Chap. VII.
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 1904.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 40, July 1936 - April, 1937, periodical, 1937; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101099/m1/241/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.