3-071-137 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Cholera in Egypt: quarantine examination at Brindisi, 1883. 'The alarm recently excited among the people of all the Italian, French, and other foreign seaports trading with Egypt, on account of the outbreak of cholera at Damietta, has led to a demand for the more vigorous enforcement of quarantine. Passengers...intending to land at Brindisi after their voyage from Port Said or from Alexandria, may find themselves subject to vexatious detention...Continental physicians and sanitary authorities still insist upon the necessity of this precaution, believing that cholera is contagious; that is, they hold that the infection may be directly communicated from one person to another...This is not the opinion of the most eminent English medical gentlemen, who have carefully studied the nature of cholera in India for many years past...Speaking from fifteen years' experience, and having been chief sanitary adviser to the Indian Government, Surgeon-General Dr. J. W. Cuningham is likely to be right, when he says, "Quarantine and cordons, and disinfection, and isolation of the sick, cannot arrest cholera, or limit its extent. The only real preventive is sanitary improvement in every shape, and removal from the locality if the disease should come".' From "Illustrated London News", 1883.