Page 255 - ירושלים: גיליון רפואי

Doctors and Patients in
Jerusalem in Former Times

Medical Reports in Newspapers during
the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Mordecai Naor

During the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Hebrew press in
Israel and abroad published frequent reports about the state of health in the country. Diseases,
disasters, epidemics, and the death of famous people always attracted considerable attention,
and correspondents and editors at the time spared no effort in keeping their readers informed.
The sanitary infrastructure in the whole country was at its lowest ebb, especially within the
walls of Jerusalem; the city’s streets were filthy, resulting in repeated medical crises. Many
warned about the situation, but usually to no avail.

Because of the poor sanitary conditions, Jerusalem’s inhabitants were plagued with frequent,
severe epidemics – fever and typhoid, meningitis and diphtheria, cholera and the plague. The
Hamagid newspaper, which was published in eastern Europe, reported that “The current news
is not good, since that terrible disease [cholera], after it had subsided and the storm appeared
to have passed and we thought we had escaped it [...], has now erupted again in full strength,
and claimed many souls.” One of those who tried to stem the tide was Dr Benjamin Rotseigal,
who did everything in his power to save lives; however, he soon lost his wife in the epidemic,
followed shortly afterwards by the death of his young son, and eventually he also contracted
cholera and died. Another epidemic that struck the city’s inhabitants a few years later, in 1890,
was diphtheria, a throat infection that causes asphyxiation. The Havatzelet newspaper begged
parents to protect their children: “You must keep an eye on the children, keep them from
inhaling moist and cold air together, and especially [beware] when the air changes from cold
to warm, or from warm to cold, and prevent them from running around fast in the cold air and
shouting with all their strength, since such changes lead to complications of the disease.”When
cholera again broke out in the country, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the city
was closed off and all those entering it were examined. This time the precautionary measures
helped, and Jerusalem was spared the epidemic.

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