THE PLAGUE AT BAGDAD.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXIII, Issue 9456, 22 July 1881, Page 3

THE PLAGUE AT BAGDAD.

The cable announcement that the Turkish Government has forbidden the Turkish newspapers to publish reports of the Bagdad plague, which continue to be unfavourable, reveals the horrors of a calamity which the outside world little suspects. It seems probable that the ravages of this dread disease in the land which was the cradle of the human race, have not fairly commenced, and w r e shall not be unprepared for startling intelligence of its progress. The plague of 180 l did not set in at Bagdad till near the close of March, and even as late as 4th April that year the deaths were not more than 150 a day. But this mortality was nothing compared with what followed. Defying not only all curative but alleviating medical treatment, it made rapid strides, and by April 10th the daily mortality rose to 1000 or more, and by the 20th had doubled this rate in a population not exceeding SO,OOO, of which nearly one-half, it was estimated, had ilecl the limits of the city. In that month alone not less than 80,000 souls perished from the scourge. The inundation of the Tigris at the end of the month, according to an eye-witness, " swept away 7000 houses, burying the sick, the dying, and the dead, with many J in health,* in one common grave*" It

was only with the cessation of the spring rains in May, and the arrival of clear weather, that either the pestilence or the .flood v/as stayed or food could be gotten into the city. - The worst of the present visitation has, therefore, in all probability, yet to come or to be reported. In a short time the far-famed scorching summer of Bagdad, in which Sir Henry Eawlinson says the thermometer occasionally mounts to 122 degrees, will add its terror to the scene of the plague's devastations, and unless the plague should prove remarkably mild and tractable, its victims will be more numerous than those of the eairthquake at Seio, whose sufferings have awakened so much sympathy in this country and elsewhere. But the Forte's suppression of the news of the Bagdad calamity seems the highest . height of folly, and calculated to rob the plague-smitten district of the sympathy and succour which the outside world would extend to it, even if its own Government is too heartless to relieve it. — New York Herald.