Instructions on procedure in outbreaks of cholera.

  • Egypt. Wizārat al-Dākhilīyah
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Instructions on procedure in outbreaks of cholera. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INSTRUCTIONS ON PROCEDURE IN OUTBREAKS OF CHOLERA. CHAPTER I. SHORT HISTORY OF THE DISEASE. The modern cholera history of Egypt dates from the year 1831. In that year, for the first time in the nineteenth century at least, Asiatic Cholera spread westward from India in pandemic form, infecting the Near East and Europe. Egypt was then heavily infected. Since that date, eight other epidemics have been recorded in the country, namely, in the years 1834, 1848, 1850, 1855, 1865, 1883, 1895, and 1902. Very little detail and no reliable figures are available concerning any of the epidemics before 1883, but with regard to the epidemics since that year the following points are worthy of note :— 1. The point of maximum intensity has always been in the summer or early autumn—between the months of May and October. 2. The disease is not endemic in the country and an epidemic is invariably the result of importation of the disease from without. 3. Once the disease has been introduced, if the factors for its develop- ment, especially the season of the year, are not favourable, it shows itself in the form of dropping cases until such time as favourable factors occur, when it bursts swiftly into a devastating and a widespread epidemic. The histories of the two most recent outbreaks illustrate these points. In 1895, the disease was discovered in September in Salhiya district. It spread to Menzala, to Damietta, and to villages on the right bank of the Nile between that town and Manstra. During October and November the epidemic was fairly brisk, the number of cases recorded being 950. In December it declined and by the end of the year had practically died out in these localities. Alexandria, however, became: infected late in December. Throughout the first four months of 1896 the only cases recorded were dropping cases in Alexandria, but during May the disease suddenly flared up in Alexandria and spread rapidly all over the country, both Lower and Upper Egypt, reaching its maximum in July. By the end of September it had practically disappeared.