National Republican., 1883-07-31
THE EASTERN PLAGUE.
Doubt ms 10 whether It Is True Cholera.
How the Disease Got Firm FoothoId.


Tho London Spectator of the fourteenth i'm
slant says: ut is quite evident to those who
read them with understanding that in deal
ing with the outbreak of "cholera" in Egypt
if the disease is cholera, which we doubt
two civilizations have clashed, as they will al
ways clash whore dual government exists
in Asia; that both are consequently para
lyzed, and that rs n result, two cities-one of
$4,000 and one Of 1900 people-have been
turned into pestifcrous prisons, secluded char
mel houses, where tho wretched prisoners,
without medicine, or disinfectants, or doc
tors, or help, with all business suspended
and incomes unattainable, and food grown
insufficient, are dying daily, chiefly of starva-
tion, amid putrefaction of every kind. Dam
ietta first and Mansourah after being towns
where every sanitary precaution is neglected,
but dogs are no longer scavengers where the
introduction Of decency without science has
produced its inevitable effect, poisonous ma
laria in all good houses, where tho bodies of
animals arc left unburied for weeks, and the
people even fish with the rotten carcasses of
dead cows, which are tethered to the banks to
attract the prawns, have experienced one of
their periodical visitations of malarious dis
ease. 1t may bo cholera, which was originally
born in Lord Hastings camp under just those
conditions, but is much more probably chol-
eraic fover, frightful disease, as deadly
sometimes as plague, but one which requires
conditions, and does not march, as cholora
does, steadily from city to city aud land
TO land Whatever IL was, had Dametta
and Mausourah beon really Egyptian, the
outbreak would have been treated by
the Mussulmans, after their manner, with a
profound calm which has in it alike apathy
and noblencss of soul. No Oriental has the
..C1 L.. L =
to sufocation with life in continuous gem
erations and the Mussulman Asiatic believes,
in addition, that the summons comes direct
from the Almighty will. Who Is he that he
should resist God, or complain of him, or
seek to turn him aside2 He will not even
pray to him for deliverance from his visible
message and, with death poured out around
him like water, passes on to his work, nurses
his sick as usual, OF at the worst announces
that 1t is the will of God that people retire
into the desert, the single efiicacious expcdi-
ent on which European army surgeons rely.
or course under such circumstances death
does its worst; but there is no disturb
ance of life, no dissolution of society,
no pause in daily business, no outbreak of
blasphemy, such as has often occurred in
French or Italian cities. Tho women pass
and the men disappear, and the children sink,
in quiet, but the community goes on, to the
eye, almost unharmed. Some faces You knew
are away, the sound of the wailing, unchanged
since tho march of the lsraolitcs, is heard
from many houses, instead of few, and
bearded men shudder visibly il you ask for
their childreni but there is no break in the
stately calm Of life in the naughty resigna-
tion. did / will to be born ?" asked n
Mussulman of the writer, urging on him that
peculiarly fetid ditch ought to be cleaned,
for it might kill him; and though tho ditch
remained, no died when his time came un
murmuring. Damietta and Mansourah
would, as Mussulman cities, have suffered
and recovered, but they are not Mussulman
cities. Above them, overshadowing them
like cloud, drifts European opinion
which demands gently that disease
be treated scientifically, and imperiously that
it be isolated. The government of Egpyt
pertorce listens to the command and perforce
obeys it, and the unhappy towns are ringcd
in by cordons of troops, with orders to shoot
down all who emerge. So stringent are these
orders that it is said the Europeans of Dami-
eta, maddened with fear and pity, attacked
the Gordon in arms and were driven back by
the bayonet, not without deaths-a trivial
horror, compared with those we shall know
when the pest houses are opened once more.
And there, Europe having been obeyed, the
government stops, Why should the Egyptian
ministers do more2 They know nothing of
hygiene; their own immovable belief is that
destiny is irreversible, that their own orders
are futile, that death and life are in the ha nds
of Allah. They will send kilograms, if you
worry enough, but they do not want them
obeyed. The townspeople, deprived by the
Gordon of occupation, of help, of wages, of
food, are left to perish. They have no
hygeists, no doctors except six wretched ma
tives, who believe all disease is cold or hot,
no opium, no disinfectants, no hospitals, no
one to order cleanliness, no one to isolate
houses, no one to compel burial away from
the roadside, no one to organize or order flight
into the desert, which again is prohibited by
the Gordon demanded by Europe. The Eu-
ropeans of Alexandria declare that medicine
is not allowed to enter, and whether that is
true or false, hitherto only one European, a
chemist named Hooker-be his name
not forgotten by Englishmen, as il will not
be by God--has entered the fatal towns. The
Europeans do not shrink from the disease but
from the long imprisonment in a fetid CITY,
with its food exhausted and its people dying
of starvation-this is literally true. according
to the Times telegrams-to which, if they
once pass the Gordon, the cowardlv selfishness
Southern Europe, bowling with fear
ofdeath because there is no other life condemns
them. Indeed it is doubtful if they would be
allowed to enter for the ministry are said
to prohibit entrance, and certainly dis
believe in effort replying to Lord Granvilles
offers of aid with gently immovable refusals.
w naU Will lnHuct DOCTORS 40 any more Than
Mussalman doctors against the will of the
Supreme2 They might as well insult heaven
by insuring their lives--a crime no faithful
Mussulman will commit. And so, in the
clash of civilizations, the wretched people of
and Mansourah perish twice MS mis-
erably as If they were either Asiatic or Euro
Dean. If they were Asiato they would die as
lged Englishmen die, under "cold wave"
)owing their heads to fate, but not left alone
,r unattended; if they were European they
would be treated, disinfected, urged out to |
afer spots, but they are neither, and they die |
Is prisoners might die kept during u fever in
morgue.
1t is just the same with the complaints sent |
Up from the interior of Egypt. The officials |
here, say the inlormants of the Times CORE |
pondent, are worse than ever, moro indolent, |
more negligent, more corrupt. How should it |
)e otherwiseY The European ideas have been |
without the Europeans to work |
hem, and while the native energy has died |
way, no European sense of duty has arrived. |
The European wishes to govern by law, tax
ng pleasure in that and not in the gratifica-
ion of his own will, and therefore carries out |
aw. Tho Asiatic, if not trained out of him
elf, finds in authority no pleasure save in |
he qualification of his own volition, often q |
'ery benevolent or upright one, and set to
administer rigid law either does not do it, or
axes a bribe to twist it into CALLING injus-
ice. Make an unframed Mussulman alb
olute, and he will often secure justice; mako
lin an exponent of law in which he does
lot believe, aud he seeks his own interest,
which is, first, to enjoy unruffled peace, and