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13
a couple of months to journey from Asia to Europe:
in fact, on the 10th of May, 1865, it was decimating
the pilgrims at Mecca, and on the 23rd of July it
was at Marseilles. The rapid progress of the
disease was due entirely to the quick movements
of commerce; for the pilgrims who left abruptly
their festival at Mecca, carried it with them in all
directions. On the 12th of May it was at Jedda,
and on the 22nd of the same month it was at Suez.
Eleven days later (June 2nd) it was at Alexandria,
and from that City it followed the track of commerce
to Malta, Constantinople, Odessa, Valencia,
Ancona, Marseilles, and Gibraltar. At first it
confined itself to the shores of the Mediterranean,
but during the autumn of 1865, it passed inland
into Italy, Spain, and the south of France; and
soon it appeared with terrible severity in Paris—
so that in the months of October and November
it there caused about 6,000 deaths. Touching us
lightly (for it reached Southampton at the end of
September, and was. fatal to thirty-five persons), it
disappeared for the season—one death only having
occurred in London, and that was of a woman who
came here ill from Paris, and died on the 22nd of
October, 1856.
Early in the spring of 1866 (April 21) the
disease appeared at Rotterdam, and then at