THE PILGRIM PATH OF CHOLERA. 649 



To the pilgrims themselves the festival turned out a disastrous 

 affair, but later investigation showed that in many villages to 

 which they returned the residents also were affected, and that in 

 at least three districts widespread epidemics were set up. 



Such is a pilgrimage within the " endemic area," where per- 

 haps it may be said that the danger in regard to cholera may be 

 measured by the deaths, the dissemination of the infection through 

 a population already charged with it not being of great impor- 

 tance. 



But any Indian pilgrimage, even in a non-endemic area, has 

 much the same characteristics. Dr. Simpson's description of the 

 great Kumbh festival, which occurs once in twelve years at Hurd- 

 war, outside the endemic area, is also very graphic, and the photo- 

 graphs (Figs. 2, 3, and 4) show the sacred pool and the approaches 

 to it to be hidden by a mass of semi-naked human beings. The 

 pollutions to which the sacred pool is exposed on these occasions 

 are indescribable. There are not only the washing of the sacred 

 fakirs, who cover themselves with wood ashes as their only cloth- 

 ing, and the general bathing of the pilgrims, who are not all in 

 the cleanest of clothes — several, moreover, on the occasion in 

 question being seen bathing with skin diseases upon them — but 

 the ashes of deceased relatives brought from the different homes 

 of the pilgrims, and the hair of widows who have been shorn, are 

 also thrown into the water. The stream, usually so bright and 

 pure, soon became a muddy one, offensive to the senses, and, al- 

 though outside the endemic area, bacteriological examination of 

 this defiled water showed it to contain the comma bacillus, which 

 is looked upon as the true contagium of cholera. 



With these pictures in our minds of what an Eastern pilgrim- 

 age means, and of what is done at the great festivals, whether of 

 Hinduism or Mohammedanism, can we wonder that they are so 

 constantly the means of lifting cholera out of its ordinary en- 

 demic character and spreading it over the world at large ? In old 

 times when cholera marched overland its route could almost be 

 dotted out by the fairs which it infected. Now, with more rapid 

 means of communication, Mecca, with of course Jiddah its port, 

 is the half-way house, the halting place, the one spot at which it 

 must be caught and stopped if Europe is to be protected. Hither 

 tend pilgrims from all parts, including those from the infected 

 area ; here are performed rites which involve of necessity the wide 

 spread of the infection among the visitors, if even perchance but 

 one of them bring with him the disease ; hence in a fortnight's 

 time is scattered this great host, carrying with them the germs 

 of pestilence to their homes in distant lands. Mecca is a peril to 

 Europe, and at all cost Mecca must be made a sanitary area, in 

 which cholera if it should arrive can play itself out, and from 



VOL. XLIII. — 47 



