The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1913. CHOLERA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 22, 24 January 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1913. CHOLERA.

It is almost beyond belief that in these modern' times, with all the advances medicine has made, cholera should have wrought such havoc in the armies engaged in the Balkan campaign. That the mortality should have been so heavy is undoubtedly due to the utter disregard of sanitary conditions by many of the combatants, and especially the Turkish forces, who, with that despondent fatalism characteristic of the Ottoman, courted a disease for which no really effective treatment has been discovered. Cholera has repeatedly, at longer or shorter intervals, even in times of peace, spread westward from India to Europe, and its appearance remained a mystery until 1883, when Professor Koch, the eminent bacteriologist, discovered the micro-organism which is responsible for the dread disease, and though his discovery was not credited in the beginning it has since been indubitably established. During tin years 1892-1895 the overland progress of the disease, which from time to time has also been conveyed by sea, was unprecedentedly rapid and virulent.. The countries which suffered most severely were: European Russia, 151,626 deaths; Caucasus, 69,423; Central Asian Russia, 31,804; Siberia, 15,037; Persia, 63,982; Somaliland, 10,000; Afghanistan, 7000; Germany, 9563; France, 4550; Hungary, 1255; Belgium, 961. In European Russia the mortality was 45.8 of the cases, the highest rate ever known m that country; in Germany it was 51.3 per cent., and in Austria-Hungary 57.5 per cent. From 1895 there have been few serious cholera epidemics west of Asia, but in India the disease is an ever-present menace, following in the wake of famine, and desolating complete districts. The splendid work of the authorities in the matter of sanitation has done much to minimise the danger, and to confine outbreaks to narrow areas, but if allowed to got out of hand, as seems to have boon the case with the Bulgarian and Turkish armies, it sweeps all before it. The statement from Sofia that 30,000 died out of the 35,000 Bulgarian soldiers attacked by cholera at Chataldja, is probably exaggerated, but if only nearly true, goes to indicate that the Turkish losses from a similar cause must have been fearful.