Holwell has become an important source for historians of medicine, as a result of his description of the practice of smallpox variolation in 18th-century Bengal. Research now suggests that the numbers may be different – and that the total death toll was 64. However, his statement, repeated in the Genuine Narrative… of events that he published in 1748, has been questioned by modern historians. Everyone has heard of the Black Hole of Calcutta, but Noel Barber brings the story of that Gehenna vividly to life as it has not been presented for a. Only 21 survived it was said, and Holwell’s letter vividly describes the horrors of that experience. He writes about the infamous incident in which 146 English citizens, including one woman, were said to have been held in an 18ft sq ft cell with just one small barred window. All these dreadful effects were occasioned by the want of atmospheric air and by their breathing a super abundant quantity of nitrogen emitted from their lungs.Offered at Reeman Dansie (20% buyer’s premium) of Colchester on November 29, it is addressed to a William Davis and dated 1757 by one of those who survived, John Zephaniah Holwell (1711-98), a surgeon and in later years Governor of Bengal.
Before 11 o'clock the same evening one third of the men were dead, and before 6 next morning only 23 came out alive, but most of them in a high putrid fever. Such was the horror of their situation that every insult that could be devised against the guard without and all the opprobrious names the viceroy and his officers could be loaded with were repeated to provoke the guard to fire upon them and terminate their sufferings. This brought on a raging thirst, the most difficult respiration and an outrageous delirium. They bad been but a few minutes confined in this infernal prison before every one fell into a perspiration so profuse that no idea can be formed of it. The Black Hole of Calcutta refers to a tiny prison in Fort William. "On the 20th of June, 1756, about 8 o'clock in the evening, 146 men were forced at the point of the bayonet into a dungeon 18 feet square. A scientist, writing of the black hole of Calcutta and its atmosphere, says. A great route, although many people may wish to abseil in from the top of the fin to savour the easier pitch two.
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