All opened at once about one o'clock;
and, had there been any virtue in discord, the cholera must soon have
deserted the place, for such another hideous compound of noises I
never heard. The disease, which seemed to have subsided with the
silent procession before I went to bed, now returned with double
violence, as I was assured by numbers who flocked to my house in
terror; and the whole population became exasperated with the leaders
of the noisy faction, who had, they believed, been the means of
bringing back among them all the horrors of this dreadful scourge.
I asked the Hindoo Sadar Amin, or head native judicial officer at
Sagar, a very profound Sanskrit scholar, what he thought of the
efficacy of these processions in checking epidemic diseases. He said
that 'there could be nothing more clear than the total inefficiency
of medicine in such cases; and, when medicine failed, a man's only
resource was in prayers; that the diseases of mankind were to be
classed under three general heads: first, those suffered for sins
committed in some former births; second, those suffered for sins
committed in the present birth; third, those merely accidental.
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