A land quarantine was established around the city, to protect the provinces.
In anticipation of a possible extensive outbreak of contagious disease a detention camp capable of accommodating some twenty-five hundred people had been established previously on the San Lazaro grounds, and to this place were taken the cholera "contacts." A cholera hospital was opened near this camp, and the stricken were removed to it from their homes as speedily as possible, the buildings which they had occupied being thoroughly disinfected, or burned if disinfection was impracticable.
The bodies of the dead were at the outset either buried in hermetically sealed coffins or cremated.

When the detention camp and hospital at San Lazaro threatened to become crowded, a second camp and hospital were established at Santa Mesa.

At this latter place both "contacts" and the sick were obliged to live in tents.
The Spanish residents were allowed to establish a private cholera hospital in a large and well-ventilated _convento_ on Calle Herran.

As the number of sick Spaniards was nothing like sufficient to fill this building, they were asked to turn over the unoccupied space in it to the board of health, which they most generously did.
In response to popular clamour a hospital under strictly Filipino management was opened in a nipa building in Tondo.

Interest in it soon flagged, and the government found itself with this institution on its hands.
The epidemic came soon after the close of a long-continued war, and there were at that time in Manila not a few evil-intentioned persons, both foreign and native, who welcomed every opportunity to make trouble.