THE SEED-GROUND OF CHOLERA.
WHETHER the cholera really first appeared in Lord Hastings's camp, or whether it only first became visible there, and had been long claiming its victims in secret throughout the Delta of the Ganges and wherever dirt and foul water existed, is one of those puzzling ques- tions which, to use Sir Thomas Browne's phrase, are well- nigh beyond all conjecture. But if the origin of the cholera is obscure, it has become quite certain what is its seed- ground and chief preserve. The source of choleraic con- tamination is Mecca,. Circumstances have so shaped themselves that the Holy City, whenever the world is liable to a plague of cholera, acts as a receiving-house and remitter of cholera to all parts of the globe. It is the object of the Mussulman pilgrim to drink out of the Sacred Well at Mecca. But the Sacred Well contains what is nothing but liquid cholera,—water swarming with cholera- germs. The pilgrim, therefore, literally journeys to Mecca in,order to drink and catch cholera. When this pious act has been performed, he and his fellows swarm back to their homes all over the East, and those who do not die by the way spread infection into every quarter of the globe,—into India, into China, into Turkey, into Africa, and throughout the shores of the Mediterranean. It was only some three months ago that Dr. Ernest Hart pointed out the machinery for spreading cholera thus afforded by the pilgrimage, and supported his conclusions by an analysis which had been made of the. water of the well at Mecca,—an analysis which showed that the water swarmed with the cholera bacillus. Dr. Ernest Hart has not had long to wait for a confirma- tion of his gloomy forebodings. The pilgrims are now beginning to return from Arabia, and the tales they bring of the ravages of the cholera, caused by the infection which centres at Mecca, are of the most appalling kind. They read more like the records of some medimval plague than the narratives of what took place only a month or two ago, and but a few days' journey from England. In May last, some nine thousand persons in all started from Tunis and, the neighbouring ports to perform the pilgrimage. The pilgrims have now returned, but only four thousand five hundred strong. That is, half of those who started were destroyed by cholera, either in going to or coming from Mecca. Reuter's correspondent gives an account of the terrible scene which took place when the friends and relatives of the pilgrims realised what had happened. On the day on which they were expected, the different Tunisian sects, with the friends and relations of the return- ing, pilgrims, in number about twelve thousand, marched down to the quays, carrying banners and singing hymns. When the pilgrims landed, it was learned for the first time that scarcely half of the great company that had started from Tunis had come back. "Heartrending cries of wailing and lamentation arose from the vast throng of women, of whom some were carried away fainting, while others threw themselves on their knees and supplicated the Prophet with frenzied fervour to restore to them the lost. The pilgrims themselves, as soon as they set foot ashore, and before they sought their relatives, turned their faces towards Mecca, and, prostrating themselves, offered thanks to Mahomet for their salvation. ' The accounts given by the pilgrims of the way in which the disease attacked them, Are terrible in their grim fatalism. " On Juno 24th, two days before the Courban Bairam, upwards of one hundred thousand Mussulmans, Arabs, Turks, and Indians had gathered on the Sacred Mount to hear the solemn ad- dress which is delivered to those who wish to become Hadji. Many, of these people were in the most wretched condition, and some had not even a loaf of bread." It was hero that the disease appears to have struck them, like the blast of a poisoned wind. When next day the onward move. men‘t to the Holy City began, it was found that the ground was strewn like a battle-field with the dead and dying ; and so terribly virulent was the type of infection thus engendered, that it was, says the account, " impossible for any living creature to approach the place." The authorities seem, however, to have realised that something must be done, and that the bodies could not be left to rot.
Accordingly, a Turkish regiment was sent to perform the work of burial and to remove any of the pilgrims who still lived. Never did troops in the heat of battle receive a command more fraught with peril. The risk, as it proved, was literally greater than that of facing machine-guns, and the moral effect far more terrible. There are ten men who will face death by bullets to on who will face death by cholera. Yet these Turkish soldiers, with the fatalistic courage of their race, obeyed as they obeyed at Plevna. " The battalion, when it reached the Mount, was seven hundred strong. After the work had been done, two hundred men only remained to go back to the coast. Five hundred of the soldiers had died of cholera," That is, nearly three-quarters of the regiment perished in the work of burial. No doubt English troops would have done the same, but they would have been upheld by many considerations,—by religious feeling, and by the instinct of mercy, and they would, moreover, have been well led, The Turkish troops pro- bably felt the sense of pity very little ; and their officers were almost certainly men with anything but a high sense of conduct. They acted merely from the most naked sense of the duty of not flinching at a command. It was an order given from afar and from above, and that and fate are to them all one.
That the remnant of the pilgrimage who have returned to Tunis will not spread infection is, we fear, quite beyond all reasonable hope. Both they and the pilgrims who are now returning in thousands to Constantinople, to Egypt, and to the other African ports of the Mediterranean, are certain to carry the infection with them. Possibly, the lateness of the year may prevent an. immediate outbreak of a serious kind ; but it cannot be doubted that there will be a plentiful autumn sowing, and in all probability as plentiful a crop next spring and summer. It remains to be considered what ought to be done to stop the infection that it has been so clearly proved spreads from Mecca. How can Mecca be put into a sanitary condition ? That is, unfor- tunately, a question far more easy to ask than to answer. In the first place, it must be remembered that no Euro- pean has ever been to Mecca, except disguised as a Mohammedan, and that to send a body of European sanitary engineers to rout out the drains and wells of the Holy City, and to provide a new water-supply, both there and on the pilgrims' way, would be to set the whole Eastern world in flames. There is only one man who can prevent Mecca continuing the seed-ground of cholera, and that is the Sultan. He is not only the temporal Sovereign of Arabia, but the head of the Faithful; and if, therefore, he ordered that certain plans for aqueducts should be carried out, they would not be resisted. What chance is there of our being able to get the Sultan to interest himself in the matter ? Not very much, we fear. No doubt, if the Ambassadors agree in asking him to do this, that, and the other, he will readily acquiesce; but that acquiescence will not necessarily produce any result. We shall have to act through a multitude of people, every one of whom will despise or disbelieve in the new improvement, and will infinitely prefer the cholera to the trouble of providing clean reservoirs. Still, something ought to be attempted. If the Sultan would allow two or three artesian wells to be bored, would order the present Sacred Well to be closed, and would suspend the pilgrimage for two years, a good deal would have been accomplished. The question is,—Who is to pay for boring the wells ? The Sultan of course will not, and it is not easy to see how the European Powers could propose to do so. Still, when we remember what expense and what injury to trade is caused by cholera, we expect that the Powers would find some means for providing funds for giving Mecca and the pilgrims a pure supply of water. It is ridiculous to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on precautions here, instead of trying to stop the plague at the fountain-head. A means of raising the money might, perhaps, be found in a pilgrim-tax collected by the Indian, French, and other Governments whose steamships carry pilgrims. The produce of the tax, with, if necessary, a further grant from each of the European Powers, might be handed over to an International Sanitary Commission, charged with the duty of placing the pilgrims under proper sanitary regulations. No doubt there are objections to this plan, as to every other. It is clear, however, that some- thing must be done. It would be the height of folly to fold onr hands, and let the cholera invade us. Mecca is the source of the disease, and therefore Mecca must be given a water-supply which is not merely diluted cholera.
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