Page 259 - ירושלים: גיליון רפואי

Many contracted the gastric disease, but mortality was low and was no different from usual in
the summer months; in September, with the fall in temperatures, the disease subsided.

Yet within two months, in October 1865, the deadly epidemic broke out in Jerusalem. This
time, Dr Rotseigal diagnosed the disease as cholera since the symptoms were clear – vomiting
and diarrhea. About a month before the outbreak the doctor had been injured in an accident,
restricting his mobility, and as a result he could only work on a partial basis during the epidemic.
During the first weeks, it affected mainly Arab residents. The first to contract the disease among
the Jewish population were the Sephardi Jews, and a fortnight later the epidemic broke out
in the Ashkenazi community as well. The two communities lived side-by-side in the Jewish
Quarter, and the time lapse in the contraction of the disease may indicate the limited relations
between them, suggesting that they may also have used different water sources.

Fearing the plague, the Governor of Jerusalem, Izzat Pasha, moved outside the city walls and
took his entire administrative staff with him. The municipal authorities ceased to function,
social tension continued to rise within the closed-off, thirsty, and hungry city, and by the end
of October the walls encompassed an isolated city subjected to the terrifying reign of cholera.
In an attempt to combat it, the Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem held a ‘Black Wedding’
ceremony, which was believed to have the power to halt epidemics, during which two orphans
were married in the Mount of Olives cemetery. The ceremony is believed to safeguard the
community by performing the charitable act of marrying the poor or those suffering from
handicaps, yet the plague continued to devastate the city.

Towards the end of the epidemic, public outrage was already directed at Dr Rotseigal, who
was accused of not caring properly for the sick. The editors of two newspapers – Halebanon
and Hamagid – came out in his defense, and Dr Rotseigal explained that his injury had made
it difficult for him to reach the sick. The injured doctor did all he could, treating dozens of
patients a day, yet he was unable to save his wife and baby boy and watched them die of the
disease. A few months later he succumbed to cholera as well, and thus his tragic story ended.
The epidemic subsided in Jerusalem in late November, having claimed nearly 500 casualties
in the Jewish community, including the sick and the dead.

Many realized that the fact that the plague had not spread to Mishkenot Sha’ananim meant
that even inside the city there were health risks that could be fatal, and that living within the
city walls was not necessarily safer than living outside them. The epidemic was an incentive for
the establishment of Jewish neighborhoods outside the Old City and resulted in heads of the
Jewish community and public-opinion leaders acquiring land outside the walls, including the
land for the Nahalat Shiv‘ah neighborhood. While it did not lead to a lasting change concerning
improvements in municipal sanitation among the residents and the authorities, it did leave a
significant social and cultural impression on the residents of the city, notorious for its ill-health
and renowned for its holiness.

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