"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الجزء II. ج. ج. لوريمر. ١٩١٥" [‎٢‎٥‎٣‎٠] (١٢٦٢/١٠٤٧)

IB
V
the Persian
coasts.
General
epidemic of
1904.
2530
October; and in December it occasioned about 30 deaths at Jashk.
In the course of the year it also reached Minab, where it did not die out
until January 1903 and where it unexpectedly revived for a time in the
month of September.
Early in 1904 cholera prevailed at Basrah, and from Basrah it made
its way to Baghdad, where it assumed a serious form and caused trade to
cease for about three months. Prom Turkish 'Iraq the disease seems to
have spread into Persia by two lines meeting at Isfahan ; the first was
by Kirmanshah, the other was by sea to the coast of Tangistan and
thence by the Bushehr-Shiraz road. At Shiraz over 7,000 persons are
said to have died, but the town of Bushehr escaped. It is probable that
the infection also reached the centre of Persia vid ^Arabistan and the
Bakhtiyari road ; for at Muhammareh, where over 200 deaths occurred,
cholera was already prevalent in May, and between July and October its
ravages at Ahwaz, Shushtar and Dizful were considerable. The Bahrain
Islands were attacked in May, and by September over 1,200 deaths were
said to have resulted ; many of the inhabitants fled to other parts of the
Gulf. In July the disease arrived in Trucial 'Oman, where, at the time
of its cessation in September, 8,000 fatal cases were believed to have
occurred. It also visited the 'Oman Sultanate, spreading from one large
place to another and causing great havoc in the interior. In Wadi
Samailj Wadi Fara' (or Rustaq) and the ports of Batinah the deaths
were estimated at 14,000 ; but at Masqat there were only 43, and at
Matrah only 12 deaths,—a happy result which may perhaps be attributed
to the sanitary measures enforced in those towns under the advice of the
British Agency Surgeon.
loir"
j-was
The early history of plague.
I
We turn now to the subject of bubonic plague,—a disease of whicli it
may be said that, as a matter of intercontinental importance, it is more
ancient as well as more modern than cholera ; for, while cholera is m
Europe of recent introduction, and even in Asia cannot be traced back
with certainty to an epoch more remote than the second decade of the
19th century, plague on the other hand comes down from a high antiquity
and was in the middle ages so prevalent in Europe that the western
continent may even be considered to have been at that time its principal
seat.
In Libya plague seems to have existed as early as the 3rd century
B. C.^ and Europe suffered in the 6th century A. D. from a visitation of
what must almost certainly have been bubonic plague. In the 14th
century A. D., under the name of the Black Death, plague ravaged the
countries of Europe after a fashion almost unparallelled in the history of
epidemics, and destroyed (it has been estimated) not less than one-fourth
of the entire population. The Black Death was believed to have been
imported into Europe from the East, through Genoa; but, if this were
the case, it soon became acclimatised in a remarkable degree, and it
remained during the 15th, 16th and ]7th century a very common and
^taki