One hundred years ago
The accounts from Egypt are most distressing. The deaths from cholera in Damietta are declining, the daily average having sunk from 120 to 35; but at Man- sourah, a town thirty-three miles up the river, with only 17,000 people, the deaths were on Monday 101, on Tuesday 102, and on Thursday 90. In neither town are there any European doctors, and the Egyptian doctors are worse than useless; while the lack of medicine, disinfectants and organisation is almost total. The Ministers are either afraid of the cholera, which is unlikely, they being Mussulmans, or they are afraid of Euro- pean pressure on the subject, for they are maintaining the cordon with savage rigour. It is utterly useless, of course, as any one passes who can bribe the soldiers; but the orders are to shoot any citizens who try to break through, and when bribes are not offered, or any one is looking on, the orders are obeyed. Ac- cording to the latest telegrams, the peo- ple, with their wages stopped, all business suspended, and no means of communicating with outsiders, are dying of starvation, and supplies sent by the Europeans of Alexandria are returned.
Spectator, 14 July 1883
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