On cholera of 1828 and 1900 (I will thread tweets around themes):
"In March 1828, a #cholera #epidemic struck #Cabul [ #kabul], transforming this earthly paradise into a charnel house. (McIntyre, 2004; p.131) - MN
“Alarm and wailing..weeping of children of the dead, and the vociferous grief of instinctive mourning..shutters and doors were taken from the shops to carry away the dead, as corpse after corpse was borne through deserted streets to their graves beyond the city. MN
"According to Afghan tradition, when any member of a family was about to die, relatives would make a sacrifice. Over the lintel of innumerable doors, pieces of meat, the flesh of sheep or of cattle, might be seen hanging, indicating the presence of cholera within. MN
"The stench of rotting flesh rose from the city and wafted up to the castle walls, which might keep out an army, but not the waterborne cholera Morbus Bacteria. Very few revived..for the medicine of the time offered no effective treatment beyond shots of brandy. MN
When the disease struck Harlan’s companion Mohammad Ali, the delightfully eccentric Persian who had always claimed to understand the ancient mysteries of science and magic, Ali resorted to the oldest and least effective remedy, #Bloodletting. MN
“He sent for a bleeder and depleted freely. Harlan looked at him Ali from the terrace, sitting upon a stone in the court as the blood flowed from his arm. He turned towards Harlan his purple visage, and smiled a ghastly grin, and ..." MN
Josiah Harlan, the first American to visit Afghanistan, was a Pennsylvanian, soldier, spy, doctor [ #quack], naturalist, traveler, and writer, who wanted to be a king and became the #PrinceofGhor. The information is from a book about him by @BenMacintyre1(2004) - MN
Another cholera outbreak happened in June 1900, in Jalalabad and Kabul, causing the death of nearly 5,000 people. Mir Munshi Sultan Mahomed Khan (1900) writes “when cholera broke out in Kabul, and my father suggested that I should go to stay in the Bala Hissar. MN
I dismissed my soldiers, left for Bala Hisar. Soon after I heard that my father had taken the disease, and the medicines which the ignorant #druggists of this country know of were being tried upon him, until the malady turned to cholera fever, and he was very ill." (Khan, 1990)MN
References:
Mcintyre, B. (2004). The Man Who Would Be King: the first American in Afghanistan. Farrar. New York.
Khan, Mir Munshi Sultan Mahomed. (1900). The life of Abdur Rahman: Ameer of Afghanistan. MN
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