Epidemics and The Naqib’s Daughter

Doing research for this novel, I learned a great deal about how Bonaparte’s French occupation dealt with the plague in Egypt and with their own troops in the Syrian campaign. They faced some of the same hard choices : how to ration limited medicine—Europeans and Christian Syrians were given priority over native Egyptians. How to contain the plague by locking down the city of Cairo. Forcing social distancing by drowning prostitutes who violated it. Trying out a new vaccine. Administering opium to the afflicted troops the French had to leave behind in Syria.