7 JULY 1883, Page 2

There is no brutality like that of the panic-struck. The

deaths at Damietta from cholera exceed one hundred a day, though the population is only 30,000. A cordon of troops has been accordingly drawn round the wretched town, with orders to. shoot any one found leaving it. Consequently, every one is afraid to enter the place, which has become a fetid prison, and there are neither sufficient doctors, guardians of order, nor medical comforts. The people die or live uncared for, relatives are divided, business is stopped, and for all any one knows the in- habitants-may be starving. At the same time, any one who can bribe the police gets through, so that if cholera were contagious, it would be conveyed in spite of the cruel restrictions. It is believed that the outbreak is, in the main, local ; and Lord Granville on Tuesday read an opinion from Sir William Gull, stating that he saw little ground for alarm, as severe epidemics. of cholera were always preceded by small outbreaks in the pre- vious winter and spring. All the States of the Mediterranean have published quarantine rules, and the French and Italian) papers insist that the cholera came from Bombay. There is no. ground, Lord Granville says, for the allegation, which, if true,. might be perpetually so, the great Indian cities never being quite free of cholera cases.