GREAT EPIDEMICS ASIATIC CHOLERA. 281 



the grand-duchy of Posen, whence it spreads at first 

 toward the east in the direction of Russia, and then tow- 

 ard the west, approaching Germany. In 1853 we find it 

 in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and then in England 

 and France, where it reached its highest point of virulence 

 in 1854. During this fatal year the scourge ravaged the 

 whole of Europe. Those great movements of troops which 

 were occurring at that period facilitated the diffusion of the 

 poison, while at the same time the great multitudes col- 

 lected together in Turkey and the Crimea formed a kind 

 of secondary centre for the abundant increase of epidemic 

 effluvia. The cholera of 1852 to 1855 entered Paris in 

 November, 1853, declined in force there in January, 1854, 

 revived in February, and raged violently in March and 

 during the following months, leaving the capital in the 

 month of August. Sixty-six departments, chiefly those of 

 the northeast, received a visit from the plague. It must 

 be observed that Switzerland, which had escaped the two 

 former invasions, paid its tribute this time. 



Hitherto these epidemics had made their entrance into 

 Europe only by way of the land. That of 1865 '66 pene- 

 trated it by sea, through the ports, principally those of 

 Marseilles and Constantinople. The cholera was intro- 

 duced in 1866 into the Hedjaz by way of India and Java. 

 It made terrible ravages there, and the pilgrims, mad with 

 terror, hurried in crowds to Djeddah, 1 on the Red Sea, where 

 they got the means, almost by force, of embarkation to the 

 port of Suez. From the 17th of May to the 10th of June 

 ten steamers brought into that city from twelve to fifteen 

 thousand pilgrims, more or less ill, who thence scattered 

 themselves over all Egypt. By the 2d of June, Egypt was 

 invaded, and in less than three months over sixty thousand 



1 Djeddah is a port on the Red Sea, distant only two days' journey 

 from Mecca ; it is the point of embarkation for pilgrims returning by sea 

 to Egypt, Asia Minor, etc. 

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