Where did Cholera come from? why is this problematic?
- Ganges river
- huge pilgrimage site
How did Cholera spread?
- spread worldwide by British colonialists and trade as a result of the empire
- spread over land to Afghans, Nepalese via troops
- Irish immigrants spread it to Canada and America
When did cholera reach Europe?
1831
Why was Europe so susceptible?
- industrial revolution
- population boom
- port cities often were covered with squalor
Mortality rate of the cholera in 19c
50%
preventative measures for cholera
- quarantine
- ## fumigation
Scapegoating
- Hungarian and Russian Jews
- poor (inequality of casualties so blame the victim, led to conspiracy theories)
- immigrants
Conspiracy theories
- healthcare workers (acting like enemies since they were burning linens)
- poisoning people
- removal of twitching bodies that looked like were still live
- disease surged when outsiders seemed to intervene
Naples 1884
- ritualised defiance (eating overripe fruit in public which was banned)
- purifying ‘sulphur fires’
- religious processions
- some skirmishes, some rebellions (some in hospitals)
- 6000 of 8000 Neapolitans died
- peace only restored with church cooperation
Why was London’s cholera considered to spread via miasma?
- London notorious for bad smells
- data was contorted to fit the miasma theory since they had no other ideas
Chadwick and the Thames
Wanted to rid London of the smell, so put sewage into the Thames which was not a good call
Lessons learned from cholera in London
- gave rise to enduring pub. health strategies
- British sanitary movement of the 1830s
- 1858: year of Great Stink –> implementation of pumping stations to take sewage away from London
When were the main outbreaks of cholera in Chicago?
1852 and 1854
Who was worst affected by cholera in Chicago?
The poor, as they tended to live in the west sanitary conditions. This also mainly affected immigrants
Filth of Chicago
- slaughterhouse
- filth of the Chicago River (1885 rainfall sickened 1.2% of population
Measures put into place to fix Chicago
- pasteurisation of milk
- chlorinating water
- death rate fell to 10% by 1934 from over 20% in 1894
