CHOLERA MT ITALY. I TALY at this moment presents a spectacle
which, in modern times at least, is altogether unexampled. We seem to be taken back to the Middle Ages, when the only method of deal- ing with a pest was to stamp it out more ruthlessly and savagely than it was ever proposed in this country, even by the most excited of agriculturists, to stamp out the cattle- plague—when, as once happened in Savoy, the peasants were forbidden, under pain of death, to venture beyond the boundaries of their villages, and soldiers were sent out to patrol the country and to slay without pity every human being who failed to conform to the command. In the present temper of the Italian people, even so murderous a measure as this would hardly be deemed too stringent. It is now clear that the regulations enforced by the Government on the frontier and at the ports—regulations which, though their futility has been abundantly demonstrated, are still maintained—were demanded by a popular feeling which there was no gainsaying. On no other supposition can the establishment of a cholera guard on the High Alps, above the snow-line (whither no man with microbes in his entrails could possibly climb), and of a triple line of sentinels on the frontier of Canton Tessin, be explained. For whatever we may think of the Italian people, the Italian Government, at least, has not lost its senses ; and if it were not done under pressure, the attempt to protect a cholera-infected country from infection by a non-contaminated neighbour (for Switzerland as yet is free from the pest) would be an act of utter and incredible folly. The scenes that are daily taking place, moreover, show that the populace of the Peninsula are frantic with fear—the fear that knows neither reason nor pity. Several cases have occurred of individuals committing suicide to save themselves from cholera, and it must be admitted that no prophylactic could be more radical or unerring. Trains coming from places supposed to be infected are stoned by the peasantry ; ships are fired at as they pass the coast ; the Companies in many instances have been compelled to suspend the service, and carriages in which cholera- patients have travelled are burnt. Spezia is beset by a cordon of soldiers, and an unlucky Englishman who is immured there writes :—" There is no getting out of the place without a bullet in your skin." Houses are placed under an interdict, and the unfortunate inmates compelled to supply all their wants, and communicate with the outer world, through the intermediary of the guards who watch them night and day. In Naples it is becoming dangerous to look ill, or assume an unusual attitude. The gendarmes are continually on the look-out for casi sospetti, and walk off to the hospitals anybody who seems a likely subject for cholera. The corre- spondent of a Swiss paper, writing from Naples, relates that a few days ago a gendarme, observing a workman leaning against a wall "in a manner not unusual in the South of Italy," believed that he had detected a caso sospetto, and was forcibly taking it to the hospital, when the victim was rescued by the crowd whom his cries brought to his help ; for, next to an ordinary Italian's fear of the cholera, is his dread of the doctors. Of the hatred and horror entertained for them by the masses, the same correspondent gives a curious instance. A man of the name of Cervinara, in whom suspicious symp- toms had been detected, was carried off by force to the Conoc- chia Infirmary, whereupon his adoptive father and two of his friends formed a project for delivering him from what they deemed certain death. Armed with daggers and revolvers, they went late at night to the door of the
infirmary, and asked to be let in. When their request was refused, they said they had brought a cholera patient ; and one of them, called Flerrero, undertook to play the part of
sick matt. The stratagem succeeded ; the door was opened and the two men entered, supporting the third. Once
inside they drew their revolvers, and made the attendants conduct them to the ward where lay Cervinara. On their way thither they met the chaplain, whom taking for one of the doctors, they seized by the throat, and would probably have either strangled or half killed, if an inspector and two gendarmes had not arrived in time to prevent the catastrophe and arrest the madmen. They thought the doctors were
poisoning their kinsman (who has since died), in order the more quickly to get rid of him ; and ideas of this sort prevail
so widely, that during the last few days physicians, while visit- ing patients in the poorer parts of Naples, have been set upon by crowds of enraged women, and in one or two instances the police have had great difficulty in saving them from de- struction. Another superstition is that the country is infested by malignant wretches who go about scattering the "poison of cholera." At Cassamicciola a party of four foreigners, while walking among the ruins, were attacked by the peasants of the neighbourhood, who took them for poisoners, and so roughly handled them, that if it had not been for the prompt intervention of some Carabineers they would almost certainly have been killed. Incidents like these show us in a truly startling fashion how skin-deep is a good deal of our civilisation. Science, and knowledge, and material improvement, have made greater progress during the last hundred years than they made in the previous five hundred ; but there exist in Europe whole popu- lations who are as credulous, as ignorant, and as superstitious as if Watt and Faraday had not been born, and railways, telegraphs, telephones, and anmsthetics had not been invented. But ignorance alone is not enough to explain the senseless terror which the mere name of cholera spreads among some Southern peoples. Italians cannot be more ignorant than Turks and Arabs, yet fear of the pest never deprives Turks and Arabs of their manhood and their senses. During the Crimean War, when cholera was raging among the Bashi- Bazouks in our service, it was almost impossible to persuade them to accept medical help. They hid their sufferings with heroic fortitude, and when nature could bear no more, lay down and died without a murmur or a cry. Neither can reli- gion be assigned as the cause—the Swiss of the primitive Cantons are Catholics, and they show no fear ; nor race—the people of Canton Tessin are of Italian blood, yet, though the cholera is at their doors, they do not lose their presence of mind. No more can the phenomenon be accounted for by imputing to the Italians a lack of physical courage. The St. Gothard Tunnel was not made by cowards; and when German and Swiss workmen shrank from the dangers and toils of that earthly inferno, the task was undertaken and completed by people from Lombardy and Piedmont, and to the memory of those who fell a suitable monument has been raised by the grateful Company.
The panic, like most other vagaries of human nature, arises from a variety of causes. First and foremost is the emotional character of the Italian people. They have strong imagina- tions and artistic minds ; they delight in music, flowers, and pictures' love life passionately, and are extremely sensitive to outward impressions. Cholera is a hideous thing. It not only kills people, but kills them suddenly; yet not so suddenly that they do not suffer pain, which to people of the sunny South must be simply appalling. Then it is greatly to be feared that their religion does not help them much. The Catholicism of Naples is a very different thing from the Catholicism of Uri and A ppenzel. The Neapolitans put their trust in saints, processions, and miracles—probably, too, in old heathen practices forbidden by the Church—and when their fetishes fail, then they are at their wits'-end, and attri- bute their trouble to malign influences,—witches, wicked doctors, and mysterious poisoners of air and water. For many generations, moreover, a great part of the Italian commonalty were designedly kept in ignorance and treated like children, and like children they behave. Very few of them can read ; they know nothing but what they are told, and swallow eagerly every idle rumour and impossible story. That a people, at once so excitable, so imaginative, and so ignorant, should be driven wild by the approach of a danger in whose presence all feel helpless, and from which many believe that there is hardly a hope of escape, is perfectly natural, and lies in the very nature of things. It has all happened before, the differ- ence being that whereas in former times news travelled slowly, panics are now spread swiftly by the very means which bring them swiftly to our knowledge.
As for the instructed classes in Italy, it would seem from most accounts that, with few exceptions, they are doing their duty nobly. The statement that several doctors had run away from Spezia is absolutely contradicted. They remain at their posts, the apothecaries keep their stores open night and day, and a great number of the inhabitants have volunteered to make house to house visitation, guard the streets, and carry the sick. It is greatly to be regretted that the Government have not the moral courage to discontinue the precautions which, as all must now know, are worse than useless. Experience has fully proved that cholera cannot be kept out of a country by sanitary cordons ; and the maintenance of quarantine on the Swiss frontier is as absurd and useless as the isolation of Spezia and other places is cruel and unwise. The first effect of a cordon is to raise the price of provisions, the next to deprive people of work, and so create an artificial scarcity, than which nothing could be more favourable to the extension of the pest. The hindrance to business, moreover, and the loss entailed on the country by these puerile precautions, are beyond computation ; and if, as there is too much reason to fear, the epidemic
should spread, they must needs be abandoned. It is im- possible to place a whole country under a sanitary interdict ; and the Italian Government, by adopting fussy regulations, aggravate the panic which it is their duty, as it is doubtless their wish, to allay.
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