St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1893-08-31
qliisrellaitg.
wurRE CHOLERA BEGINS.
nuorv WeIp' Held Responsible for
the Great Plague.

lo nhers and chemists, working to-
Ia atpher have succeeded in tracking
ss s'e cholera and similar plaques to
Ihs;r breeding ground. They have
o rr the problem of stopping these
pp"stiIences that march out of the
orient squarely before the western
world. ~
.be sacred well, Zemzem, must be de-
stroyed or purifed-and it is practi-
S S impossible to purify it. To let
y remain as it is means, year after
"ear the same dread that now fills
Europe and America, with every few
years a plague stealthy Staying its
tcns of thousands. To attempt to
DESTROY it or to interfere with it in
anv way means the stirring to
frenzy of the most fanatical, cruelest
people on earth.
The first point in this tracking of
cholera to it's lair was made by the
chemists. They analysed the disease
carefully and arrived at these con-
cusions:
First-That cholera is filth dis
ease, carried by dirty people to dirty
places and diffused by specifically
poisoned water.
Second-That you may eat chol-
era and drink cholera, but you cam
not catch cholera.
Third-That cholera may be con-
sidered, for all practical purposes, as
an exclusively water-carried disease,
and that it is carried only by water
poisoned by human discharges.
The next point was to go back
along the pathways of cholera to
the place where they met-if they
did meet, converging from north,
south, east and west at the Holy
City of the Mohammedan world,
Mecca. 1t was not hard to follow
their paths once the neighborhood
of Mecca was reached.
Year by year, in the summer
months, the pilgrims throng there
from every direction. They remain
there from week to three months
raising the population Of the Holy
City from $4,000, to 100000
and often to 100000. Each year
the crowded, steaming, malodorous
streets are packed with fanatics
walking uncermoniously over the
unburied bodies of thousands O
other fanatics slain now by small
pox, again by yellow fever, again by
cholera, or simultaneously attacked
and slaughtered by a score or les:
formidably named diseases. Eacl
year the horribly filthy city Stays it.
temporary inhabitants by the thou
sands, and the lines of march of thos'
who survive are like Battlefield
on which the dead are yet unburied.
Cholera, filth.born disease
springs from no ordinary neglect o
hygienic precautions. Its germs ar
incubated in a conglomeration o
tiIthiness-in the meeting of diseas
germs Of all degrees Of virulence
Mecca affords such facilities for ger
mlnation as does no other spot OF
the face of the globe. The Indian
fairs are bad, and the Indian pilgrim
ages are still worse, but none of then
has Zemzem.
This we'll ofZemzem is in one of tn
marble rooms of the famous mosqu
at Mecca. 1t is surrounded by
marble wall FIVE feet high. Its circu
Var pool is less than five feet dee
and about six feet in diameter. 1t
waters, dark always, and just nov
dscoored and ill-smelling, have bee
tasted by few Europeans. One c
these, Sir Richard Burton, says the
are bitter, much resembling a
infusion of a teaspoonful of Epsor
salts in large tumbler of tepi
water"
The Mohammedan tradition
that this is the we'll which Hags
found when Abraham banished he
and that it burst out under tt
stroke of the angel Gabriel's winl
Whatever of disease there was in tt
pool each pilgrim has drunk, hs
hadin washings over his body. Ar
the fanatics think these waters a
especially beneficial in cooling feve
and healing all diseases.
The drinking of these waters is tt
last and browning attack upon II
health of the pilgrim. He has endu
ed the fatigues of the long journ'
from his distant home. His syste
has been weakened by bad food
no food at all, by bad water, |
sleeping in foul atmosphere, by p
Vations of every sort. Then
drinks and washes in the waters
the Zemzem, and dies. Indeed, VIII
he goes there to drink he may /;
ready have the disease. So t
plague is set agoing, and some of t
streets of Mecca are filled with t
dead and dying. And the carava
and the dusty piles Of pilgrims mo
Ing away are purveyors of disea'
All sorts of plans have been ST.
gested by which something could
done without touching Moha
medan fanaticism, but none OF t
plans is of account, because no
gets at the root of the matter. Sa