Further reports by Surgeon-General Hunter on the cholera epidemic in Egypt.
- Hunter, William Guyer.
- Date:
- 1883
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Further reports by Surgeon-General Hunter on the cholera epidemic in Egypt. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![tlie Conference ?—“ In case a cholera epidemic should reach Egypt hy way of the Red Sea, and Europe and Turkey should escape the contagion, would it not be right to interrupt temporarily all communication between Egypt and the whole Mediterranean basin?” (adopted unanimously with the exception of Salem Bey); yet Dr. Salem Bey, now Salem Pasha, was at one with the majority as regards the contagious and transmissible nature of the malady. But even if we grant all authority to the conclusions drawn by the Conference, it is necessary, in order that cholera should have been imported into Damietta, that it should have been brought there by sick people or by contaminated articles, having come, both of them, from India during the current year, in which country cholera prevailed hardly a month before it broke out at Damietta. Without inquiry as to the extent to which the measures of sanitary quarantine against arrivals from Bombay, Calcutta, and Java were properly enforced in Egyptian ports, we made minute and assiduous investigations in view of coming upon the track of a traveller or of a bale of merchandize coming into Damietta, no matter by what route. We even pushed our inquiries back to many months before the outbreak of the malady. The following is all the information we could collect:—- On the 21st Eebruary, 1883, an Afghan, called Sultan Mohamed, son of Sardar, came to Damietta from Cairo and left for Jerusalem. On the 7th March a Boukariote, named Hour, son of Mohamed, arrived at Damietta from Port Said hy the lake route, and left for Jerusalem. On the 24th March eight Afghans arrived from Cairo, and left for Jerusalem. On the 29th March an Afghan, called Hadgi Amin, son of Arsselain, came from Cairo, and left for Jerusalem. On the 24th April an Xndo-Persian, called Ali, son of Ilazrat-Nour, came to Damietta from Cairo, and left for Jerusalem. On the 20th May an Afghan, called Hadgi Mohamed, son of Darouich, came to Damietta from Jaffa, in Syria, and left for Cairo. On the 7th June a Boukariote, called Hadgi Nazir, son of Khoda-Wardi, came to Damietta from Cairo, and left for Jerusalem. Lastly, to complete the information, we must note that on the 24th June some Boukariotes came to Damietta from Jaffa, in Syria. The six principal people among them are those whose names follow : Abdel-habib, son of Mohamed ; Cherif Abdel Hour; Chiar Mohamed, son of Abdel Moufid ; Gubar, son of Sol tan ; Fadleldin, son of Amin ; and Badaoui Woukrim. These last two are natives of Hindustan. The chief doctor of the town of Damietta, Ali Effendi Grhibril, assured me that these strangers were at least twenty in number with their wives and children, and that they came to Damietta on Thursday, the 21st, whilst the passport office entered them about the 21st. But in verifying the exact date of their arrival at Damietta Hy sea at the quarantine office it appears certain that they did indeed arrive on the 24th June, and that the number of travellers was twenty-one; hut there were but six strangers among them, namely, the Boukariotes and natives of Hindustan, whose names we gave above; the rest were Jews, including the Rabbi, Achil-ben-Benjamin, and his son, and native Egyptians. But Damietta can be approached otherwise than by sea. Merchandize and strangers can come thither by way of the lake. It is so close to Port Said, and its daily relations with that port are so continuous, that it would he possible for foreign merchants, or even for simple workmen of Port Said from among those who work on hoard the ships coming from India, to have entered Damietta, and to have brought the disease with them. It has been said that during the Pair of Sheikh Abou-el-Maati, which brought some 15,000 people to Damietta, two merchants were present in the town who had just come from Bombay. This information was given to us in a note from Dr. Ardouin Bey, who in his turn had it from an English doctor, who was very respectable and worthy of belief. It is easy to understand with what zeal we sought information from the merchants, Notables of the town; the following is what the Notable Said-el-Lozi thinks he is able to be positive about: “ During the fair no Indian merchant or tradesman appears to have been present, neither anybody selling Indian goods: certainly a stranger was seen, with a turban like a Dervish’s, and tolerably well dressed, hut he spoke to many people of the town, and told everybody that he had come from Cairo, where he had lived for seven years.” Lastly, Dr. Elood, doctor at the Port Said hospital, who, like ourselves, is a great partizan of the theory of the importation of the disease now prevailing as an epidemic at Damietta, had, as we also had, for a moment thought that he had found the key to [13x4] E 2](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24975370_0029.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
