What You Should Know About Cholera

Cholera has been known by various names, among them "al-hayda" and "the yellow air." In former ages people considered it a punishment from God, and they would shut themselves up in the mosques and churches to pray and implore God to lift this affliction from them. It was the men of religion who undertook the examination of the sick, and they would carry the stricken out into the open country until they recovered or died!

Cholera is caused, as is well known, by a microbe about two thousandths of a millimeter in length, shaped like the letter waw. It is a microbe that perishes quickly: boiling kills it, and exposure to dryness kills it within two or three hours. In stagnant water it may live twenty days or more. An acid medium, even one only slightly acid, prevents it from multiplying.

The direct source of infection is what the sick discharge from their bowels; by this the waters are polluted, and from it the flies carry what they carry and so spread the disease. And among the healthy are some who carry the microbe in their intestines while themselves immune to it, and who spread it among people without falling under suspicion.

If the microbe enters the mouth, it passes to the intestines and multiplies there. Between the entry of the microbe and the appearance of the disease lies a period ranging from one day to seven.

The symptoms of the disease are continuous colic and severe diarrhea, which may reach some 15 times in the hour — with no yellow in it, but white like rice-water — together with vomiting; and by these two the patient's body is drained of its water, and in that draining lie the causes of death. Besides the loss of water, the microbe deposits a poison by which the body is poisoned.

The specialists among physicians and men of science say that inoculation against cholera has value, but that it gives its recipient only a temporary protection. Every country in the world is exposed to the appearance of this disease, and the state of cholera yesterday is the very state of it today; the only thing new is the use of the serum, for prevention alone, since it was unknown in those days. The physicians' sole concern in the past was to confine the disease to the place where it appeared, so that it should not spread to other places, along with the isolation of the patient.

In the year 1885 this epidemic appeared in Venice, in Italy, then moved on to Brindisi, Naples, and Rome; fifteen thousand were stricken by it, and it killed 8,650.

In 1902 the cholera epidemic swept the land of Egypt from one end to the other, after the epidemic had made the round of most of the capitals of the world; and despite the vigor with which the disease was fought, the number of victims in Egypt reached an appalling figure, for some 72 thousand souls died within three months.

After that, Egypt did not know this disease again except in isolated cases, not exceeding five, which seeped in from Palestine with the labor units in 1918.

The cholera germ thrives most in the hot months, and particularly in early autumn; and it has no respect for age, for it strikes children, young men, and old men alike. Infection with it produces no immunity against the germ, for one and the same person is liable to be stricken by it twice, and three times, and four.

This disease was not known before the beginning of the nineteenth century; it appeared in 1817 and covered Asia.

The physicians have not been able to discover the source of the present epidemic of 1947 in Egypt. They say that it cannot have seeped from India into Egypt by way of a sick person infected with it, because the incubation period of this disease ranges between 3 and 4 days and may reach seven, while the journey from India to Egypt, as is known, takes about a week — a period exceeding the prescribed term of quarantine; that is to say, the symptoms of the disease would be bound to show plainly and clearly before the steamer docked.

They think it more likely that the disease slipped into Egypt by way of a germ-carrier — a person who takes it into his body without the signs of the disease appearing on him, and who carries it for a period that may exceed two months, during which he is able to spread the disease where he will, without willing it.

The cholera epidemic spreads by way of water polluted by the stools of the sick or of germ-carriers, whether through the drinking of this polluted water or through the vegetables and fruit that have been washed in it. The most dangerous of germ-carriers is the cook. And the flies may carry the infection to the food you eat: fight the fly, then, and wipe it out, and you will be safe from its evil.

The means of prevention may be summed up thus: isolating the sick completely, and discovering the germ-carriers and isolating them as well. As for the healthy, they must refrain from eating raw vegetables and fresh fruit exposed to the settling of flies without washing them well and dipping them in boiled water to which one of the disinfectants — potassium permanganate, for example — has been added. And they must raise their standard of health.