318 



EPIDEMIC DISEASES IN 1883. 



were thought necessary were finally made 

 effective by the British Government. Many 

 of the cordons had been established to protect 

 places which were either infected at the time 

 or subsequently became infected, were then 

 abolished, they being no longer of any use, and 

 the British Government directed the enforce- 

 ment of sanitary measures by the troops then 

 in Egypt. 



The following extract from a report to the 

 State Department, by United States Consul- 

 General G. P. Pomeroy, stationed at Cairo, 

 under date of August 16th, will show the ener- 

 getic measures adopted : 



At a recent interview with Surgeon-General Hunter, 

 who was sent to Egypt by the English Foreign Office 

 as medical adviser to the Egyptian Government, I 

 learned a few facts, which I will here recount. This 

 gentleman, with medical assistants, has just returned 

 to Cairo from a tour of inspection of the infected dis- 

 tricts in Lower Egypt, of which the most important 

 towns are Damietta, Mansourah, Samanoud, Zagazig, 

 Kafr-Zayat, Mahala-Kybir, Tanta. and Bcnha. Sur- 

 geon-General Hunter remarked that, with the aid of 

 Sir Edward Malet, he communicated to the Minister 

 of the Interior a decided wish to see promptly exe- 

 cuted in Cairo, and throughout all the infected dis- 

 tricts, the cleaning of the mosques, streets, and ceme- 

 teries, of filth and foul matter, to bury the corpses at 

 least one metre under the ground, to cover them with 

 quicklhnej and to destroy by fire the small houses 

 tainted with the malady, and the pestilential or nox- 

 ious air by which it is produced. In this matter, it is 

 necessary to state, the Arab people all through the 

 country here, from a religious impulse, have offered 

 a considerable opposition, which was fortunately 

 silenced by naming, as delegates for executing these 

 measures, notables, Arab doctors, and employe's of 

 the different government local administrations. Sur- 

 geon-General Hunter also informed me that the Eng- 

 lish Government, with acquiescence of the Egyptian 

 native authorities, has concluded to form here, as in 

 India, a permanent Sanitary Commission, which will 

 be composed, in the beginning, of eight officers and 

 forty assistants, belonging to the Indian Medical 

 Board (intendancy), who are experienced in the study 

 and practice of this disease, and who will have com- 

 plete charge and management, in this land, of all pub- 

 tic sanitary measures. 



Consul-General Pomeroy expressed his opin- 

 ion that the chief cause of the " present " cessa- 

 tion of cholera in Cairo, and some other towns, 

 is to be attributed " to the very high rise of the 

 Nile, which has very lately filled with fresh 

 water the canals of the infected districts, and 

 thereby cleaned out the poisonous matter and 

 filth which was the direct origin of the devel- 

 opment of cholera. Apart from the cholera 

 epidemic, there is at present a great deal of 

 typhoid fe'ver in the country, and we have just 

 got over an epidemic of spotted typhus fever." 



While the epidemic lasted, great alarm was 

 felt in Europe, not only among the countries 

 bordering on the Mediterranean, but in Russia, 

 which quarantined her Black sea ports, and 

 later those in the Baltic, and all Europe quar- 

 antined against arrivals of persons and goods 

 from Egypt, in view of the danger of importa- 

 tion of cholera. England departed from her 

 usual conservatism against quarantine, by lay- 

 ing the responsibility upon customs officers to 

 make special investigation of the importation 



of cargoes from Egypt and of passengers; and 

 it is probable that the failure of the cholera to 

 spread to Europe is due, first, to the early quar- 

 antine measures instituted against it, and, sec- 

 ond, to the energetic policy of the British Gov- 

 ernment when it was discovered that the Egyp- 

 tians were either powerless or incompetent to 

 institute proper sanitary measures themselves. 

 Owing to the large quantities of rags annually 

 exported from Egypt to the United States by 

 way of England, it was felt by our Govern- 

 ment that great danger existed in the unre- 

 stricted importation of infected rags, and sani- 

 tary inspectors were appointed in Liverpool 

 and London, to inspect the cargoes of vessels 

 departing for the United States, and to give 

 notification by telegraph of the departure of 

 infected goods. Collectors of customs were 

 forbidden to allow the entry of Egyptian rags 

 until the municipal health officer of the port 

 where the entry was to be made should give a 

 certificate that in his opinion no danger need 

 be apprehended from so doing. This almost 

 stopped the importation of Egyptian rags for 

 some months, and steamships declined to re- 

 ceive suspected rags as freight. It is now pro- 

 posed that American shippers of rags shall have 

 them properly disinfected before shipment, and 

 to that end a sanitary inspector, acting under 

 the direction of the United States consul, has 

 been appointed, and stationed at Alexandria, 

 whose duty it is to see that the rags have been 

 thoroughly boiled before baling. Machinery on 

 a large scale has been shipped to Alexandria by 

 one of the principal paper-manufacturing firms 

 of the United States, whereby the boiling and 

 subsequent drying may be accomplished with 

 but little loss of time. From a scientific point 

 of view, the cholera epidemic in Egypt does not 

 appear to have afforded any permanent lesson. 

 The early cordons were too inefficiently con- 

 ducted to be of material service in settling the 

 question as to the prevention of its spread, and 

 the several commissions sent by France and 

 Germany respectively do not appear to have 

 conclusively settled the causation of the dis- 

 ease. The German Commission, headed by 

 Prof. Koch, announced the discovery of a mi- 

 crobe and bacillus, found principally in the 

 walls of the lower intestines. The French 

 Commission was nominally headed by Prof. 

 Pasteur, but was really headed by M. Thuillier, 

 who died at Alexandria, a martyr to his scien- 

 tific zeal. This commission reported that a 

 micro-organism was found in the blood, lo- 

 cated in the spaces between the blood-globules. 

 Further experiments are necessary in order to 

 demonstrate the truth of these propositions. 

 In the mean time nothing has been discovered 

 which in any way modifies the treatment of 

 previous years. The u Fyers 1 treatment," which 

 consists in the administration of emetics and 

 purgatives, has again been brought forward. 

 This treatment, it will be remembered, origi- 

 nated in Mauritius in 1856. 



A commission was appointed by the German 



