Another precaution taken was the establishment of a camp just outside the fortress for the inhabitants of the houses attacked. Indian experience has proved that it is very advantageous to regiments when visited by cholera to move them out of their barracks and place them under canvas on fresh ground. The cases at Gibraltar nearly all occurred among the poorer inhabitants living in very crowded dwellings; and the families attacked being at once sent to the camp and supplied with pure water, the disease was immediately checked. Their houses were temporarily closed, the drains disinfected, cisterns emptied, and rags and rubbish burnt; and in the course of a few days they returned home, and the cholera, so far as they were concerned, was at an end. The epidemic at Gibraltar lasted for about two months, and great misery resulted amongst the poorer classes, owing to the city being placed in quarantine by the other ports of Europe. As a consequence very few vessels called, and large numbers of the inhabitants were out of employment. So great was the poverty that public soup kitchens were established, and for some time about 2,000 persons a day received free rations of soup and bread. In the meantime the disease was raging at Linea and other neighbouring towns, and, considerable alarm being felt, I was constantly urged to establish a cordon of troops across the neutral ground, and to prevent all communication from the outside. But although the precise causes of cholera may be somewhat obscure, it appeared to me that, as the chief supplies of food came from Spain, had a cordon been established, prices would have risen at once, and the misery already existing would have been considerably increased. All Indian experience proves that such arrangements are useless. In fact, a line of sentries cannot stop the march of a disease; and therefore, advised by experienced medical officers who had served in the East, I refused to close the communications with Spain. The actual cases of cholera at Gibraltar and at Linea respectively in the autumn of 1885 were as follows: +-----------+-------------+--------------------+------------------+ | | Population, | Number of cases of | Number of deaths | | | Approximate | cholera | | +-----------+-------------+--------------------+------------------+ | Gibraltar | 24,000 | 32 | 24 | | Linea | 12,000 | 429 | 206[132] | +-----------+-------------+--------------------+------------------+ So that whilst in Gibraltar one person in 750 was attacked, in Linea it was one in 28. These facts speak for themselves, and prove that adequate sanitary measures and precautions will to a great extent serve to prevent the spread of epidemic disease.