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,* 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 
1Djeddah 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, ete. 
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