Hundreds Of Cholera Victims.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 15, 1912:
Turkish Soldiers Die in Railway Station After Crawling There.
    LONDON, Friday, Nov. 15.— Either for military reasons or on account of the cholera, which is spreading rapidly at Hademkeui. the Turkish Government, the Constantinople correspondent of The Daily Telegraph says, is prepared to make large concessions in order to prevent the Balkan armies from entering Constantinople.
    An uncensored dispatch dated Nov. 12 from Constantinople to the Reuter Telegram Company says that the cholera is extending alarmingly among the troops. The cases are reckoned by the hundreds, while among the refugees there are even more victims.
    In Constantinople, adds the dispatch, the disease is most difficult to control. One train alone brought 160 patients from San Stefano. They were conveyed to the Lazaretto at Beycos, on the Bosphorus. The bodies of twenty soldiers who had died from cholera were taken from the same train.
    Many trains have returned from the front with soldiers who are not wounded but are in a state of physical collapse, owing to exhaustion due to exposure and lack of food. The sights at some of the stations near Tchatalja are unnerving. Cholera victims crawl to the stations for water or in the hope of getting to Constantinople. They can be seen lying about in every stage of disease.
    The greatest danger threatening Constantinople is that the water supply from Lake Derkos may become contaminated. Only a few cases have been reported up to the present among the citizens in the capital and it would seem that the disease is not the deadliest form of Asiatic cholera, as, notwithstanding the unfavorable conditions to which the army is exposed, it is asserted that 60 per cent, of the cases have recovered.
    The authorities are doing their best to rid the capital as quickly as possible of the influx of refugees. They are being dispatched at the rate of several thousand daily to the Ports of Ghemlik and Moudania or by rail to Konieh. The active interest of the authorities, however, ends with the removal of the poor exiles, and no provision has been made for food supplies. The refugees are simply dumped into the towns on the coast or in the interior and are left to find food for themselves. Fortunately, most of the population are naturally charitable, and will share the last crust with the wandering fugitives,
    "One thought strikes an observer forcibly at seeing this people migrating back to its ancient home." says the correspondent, "namely, how little altered after 500 years are the wanderers, returning practically in the same manner in which they came into Europe five centuries ago — the same rough wooden carts dragged by bullocks or buffalos, and covered with straw matting, which conceals the household lumber, and the female members of the family hunched into the smallest conceivable space peering with sad eyes at the unfamiliar sights, while the sheep and goats are prevented from straying by the youngsters of the family."
    A Daily Mail dispatch from Constantinople declares that one of the Ministers is authority for saying that 390 deaths from cholera occurred in one Turkish camp at Hademkeui on Wednesday.
    An uncensored Daily News dispatch from Constantinople, by way of Constanza, says:
    "The Government is flying in the face of Providence by bringing cholera infected troops from the Adana district in spite of the protests made by the railway company. They have been sent to Tachatalja, where, as elsewhere, the officers make not the slightest efforts to secure sanitary precautions, even in the camp."