In the tragic throes of the Libyan crisis, Malta is at the forefront of providing humanitarian aid, with Benghazi being practically at the centre of this scenario. What is happening today brings to mind a humanitarian mission that went to Benghazi in 1893 when the town was gripped by an epidemic disease.
On April 5, 1893, a medical commission was sent to Benghazi to investigate and report upon the causes and nature of an epidemic disease said to be raging there. Was it the dreaded bubonic plague, or some other killer disease?
Towards the end of November 1892 and during early December, cases of the disease in question spread among the Bedouins o. At the time they were stricken by famine, brought about by three successive years of drought combined with plagues of locusts.
Between December 13 and February 29 about 20,000 Bedouins camped in open spaces close to and even among the houses of Benghazi. A virulent form of contagious fever with excessive mortality broke out in late December. It became very severe in January and spread to the town, from house to house, in regular succession of streets and quarters.
It affected every household, though this was not markedly the case in the more hygienic Christian community, many of whom decided to leave the town in March. Among the Jews it ceased at the Paschal feast, when they are compelled to wash themselves, their clothes and utensils and to whitewash their homes.
The two doctors forming the Maltese commission were D. Vella and M. Louis Hughes, Surg. Capt. AMS. They left Malta on April 5 aboard s.s. Lady Downshire accompanied by Prof. Salvatore Pisani, who had been appointed Chief Government Medical Officer in 1885.
They landed at Benghazi on April 8, and stayed at the house of Mr W. Alvarez, the British consul. Angelo Mizzi, the travelling Ottoman Sanitary Commissioner from Tripoli, placed at their disposal the notes he had taken while travelling in the interior between Derna and Benghazi.
At the time, the town was the capital of the province of Benghazi, in Tripolitania (sic), governed by a Mutessarif under Ottoman rule, but independent of the Valy or governor-general of Tripoli.
Situated on the western side of the promontory of Barka, its appearance on arrival was picturesque especially at sunset, with its white towers and domes visible from some distance.
Benghazi’s mostly Muslim population, numbering 16,000 to 23,000, consisted of Arabs, Bedouins, Turks, Egyptians, Tunisians, Greeks, Candiotes and other Levantines, Jews, Negroes, Sudanese, Maltese and a few other Europeans. The Christians, about 370, were mainly Maltese.
The Europeans and a few well-to-do Arabs lived in fairly good and clean houses, but the remainder lived in squalor. There were a few Capuchin monks and Sisters of St Joseph, who worked among the poor.
The climate, when the Maltese doctors arrived, was cool and pleasant. There were a few merchants, and a few shops, but trade was at a very low ebb.
The principal agricultural interests were in barley, almonds and fruit. The grapes were very good, but the figs and dates were inferior. A large number of cattle, sheep and horses were also bred in the interior and exported to Malta, Canea (Crete) and Alexandria.
Other exports to Malta were butter, charcoal, hides, sponges, wool and horsehair. Ivory was exported to England via Malta.
Imports were from North African countries, England, France, Crete and Malta, but certain items were imported exclusively from Malta, including clothes, earthenware, flour, wheat, soap, furniture and sugar.
In the evening of their very first day in Benghazi, Vella and Hughes were able to make a preliminary verbal report from a boat to Pisani on the Lady Downshire which enabled him to depart for Malta at once without having touched land. By the end of March the disease had subsided and the two doctors from Malta observed only six acute cases, three of which were fatal.
From information passed on to them by Mizzi, the sanitary medical officer of the port, and three military medical officers, and from evidence obtained from convalescents coupled with their own direct observation, the Maltese commission reached the conclusion that the disease in question was without doubt the highly contagious fever known as ‘spotted typhus’ or Typhus exanthematicus.
In their report they wrote extensively on the symptoms of the disease and its consequences. It lasted between 15 and 17 days, sometimes lasting nearly a month.
Death was from cardiac or cerebral complications, blood poisoning or exhaustion, and occurred in very bad cases about the seventh day, in others from the 10th to the 21st day. Convalescence, once fairly set in, was progressive and constant.
They also gave the medical history of Benghazi in regard to plague, cholera, smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid fever. Typhus raged in 1872, and to a lesser extent in 1874.
According to Dr Paul Cassar’s A Medical History of Malta (which does not mention this incidence on Benghazi), a number of what were regarded as cases of typhus occurred in Malta in 1874, causing 11 deaths, but there were no further outbreaks until 1944.
Vella and Hughes remained in Benghazi until April 22; from there they travelled east to Derna and Alexandria. On May 2 they were back in Malta where they submitted their ‘detailed medical report’ to the government.
A printed copy of the report was laid on the table of the Council of Government at the sitting of May 31, 1893.
The report of the medical commission starts with the preliminary report which had been given to Pisani. It then goes on to describe in detail all there was to know about Benghazi – situation, population, religion, climate, social and commercial condition, agriculture, industries, and so forth. A short note on Derna was also written.
This was followed by the ‘detailed medical report’ which covered not only the medical history of Benghazi and the history and characteristics of the actual epidemic, but also the history of typhus in the Mediterranean.
Two maps in chromolithography accompanied the report. One showed the geographical situation of Benghazi and Derna, the other depicted the route taken by Angelo Mizzi (grandfather of Albert and Tony Mizzi and their two sisters Lola Sammut and Sophie Grech) across the Barka district.
Both maps are unsigned, but they were very probably done by Giuseppe Brocktorff, the last surviving son of Charles Frederick, who passed away on December 30, 1893, only seven months after the publication of the report.