Thousands Stricken Daily With Cholera.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 19, 1912:
Thirst-Maddened Turkish Soldiers Continue to Drink from Infected Streams.
AN INFERNO AT HADEMKEUI
Railway Station Full of Dead — "This Is the End," Says Correspondent Who Visited Turkish Headquarters.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    VIENNA, Nov. 18.— A Neue Freie Presse correspondent, telegraphing via Constanza, says:
    "I have ridden around all the positions in the Turkish centre near Hademkeui. I have witnessed scenes of misery such as I have never seen before.
    "We saw the carcases of horses lying by the dozens in muddy streams and soldiers passing by, tortured with burning thirst, drank the water in which the bodies were lying.
    "Yesterday troops from Asia were landed at San Stefano and are now marching to the front. They are already taking scores of cholera patients, while sufferers who have come from the front to Makrikeui infect every place where they stop.
    "The nearer one gets to Hademkeui the more frequent do corpses become. Along the roads outside the village and on the bridge dying men stretch despairing hands toward us. From the railway station a train starts in which is Ali Riza Pasha, Artillery Commander at the Tchatalja lines, who is sick with cholera.
    "Dead and dying lie in the trenches and along the roads. Officers of the General Staff inform us that on Sunday, Nov. 10, there were 500 cases, 100 of which were fatal. To-day there are already 5,000 cases.
    "This is the end. In the forts there were at first only fifteen deaths and an attempt was made to localize the outbreak, but the trucks with chloride of lime came too late. They should have been sent at least a fortnight earlier, and then the epidemic could have been prevented. Now all the springs are exhausted, and the people are drinking stagnant water.
    "All the patients have been herded into a camp surrounded by barbed wire. Around the camp are sentries with fixed bayonets. All this, however is to no purpose, as on the other side of the inclosure thousands of persons are groaning with pain. Their cries rend the air. With faces emaciated by suffering they wander about the streets and in the gardens and fields.
    "We go in search of our horses, which we left behind here ten days ago. Dying men are in the stalls, and they cry for mercy when they are disturbed. Many of them curse us in the madness of their pain.
    "Here we find our horses, and we must certainly give high praise to the honesty of the Turks. Except some small baggage, nothing is missing.
    "On our return we see officers disinfecting themselves and giving advice to the men. The latter, however, continue to drink water which is infected by corpses. They are either fatalists or maddened by thirst. The population is in flight.
    "The Tchatalja line is a girdle of steel formed by 1,200 guns. The troops arriving from Asia Minor are only a strategic reserve. If the cholera does not attack the men in the forts the resistance can easily last for weeks."