Cholera In The 18th Century

The book The Ghost Map: The story of London’s most terrifying epidemic—and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world” by Steven Johnson is about the 1854 cholera epidemic in London. There were no sewage systems to get rid of waste in London at the time, so the people would throw their untreated wastes into the Thames River and pits called cesspools. This increased with the invention and popularization on the water closet, which drained even more wastes into the cesspools. This way of ridding of wastes then proceeded to contaminate the city’s water supply and spread diseases faster. During the summer of 1854, the mother of a sick baby, baby Lewis, washed her child’s soiled cloth diapers in a bucket of water that she poured into the house’s cesspool cellar, starting the cholera epidemic. Coming into contact with the contaminated water led many of the city’s people to contract the disease and die.

In the book The Ghost Map, cholera was going into a massive outbreak in London during 1854. The story begins as one of the characters, baby Lewis, Contracts cholera, and when the mother washes diapers and cleans for the baby, she throws the water into the street. This leads to the outbreak. While the Board of Health believed the smell of the city was the cause of the outbreak, there was another citizen who believed otherwise. Henry Whitehead was a doctor who began to specialize in anesthesiology. Meanwhile, John Snow was researching his own theories, and he worked his way through the city to locate where high volumes of people were dying. While he was doing his research he began making a map, and he graphed where people were dying. Each house

Summary: The site explains what diseases were common during the Elizabethan era. It also explains why they were affected by said diseases so much. It also says why people didn't live very long because all of the diseases were common.

Although most disease struck the poorest, the upper class was not fully immune. Because people wanted to move to cities to make their lives better, they were forced to live around these diseases without proper means for prevention, protection, and recovery. Once contracting the disease, they would either die within hours or suffer from uncontrollable diarrhea and pain. In addition, scientific knowledge on disease was not as developed as it fortunately is today. Doctors had not yet learned the concept of a germ theory and instead associated the disease with the “bad air” that surrounded toxic, polluted cities. This “bad air” was known as miasa and was incorrectly used to explain the spread of cholera in major cities during the mid 1800s. After studies and research, doctors noticed that there was a heavy concentration of miasmata near certain rivers, but they still connected it to a lack of air quality in bustling cities such as Manchester, London, and Paris. Although air pollution and coal emissions did play a role in certain illnesses, they were not the main cause for diseases such as cholera. Poor ventilation, dirty homes, malnourishment, and no access to clean water made people easily susceptible to a ruthless disease like cholera. Moreover, causes of cholera were investigated more thoroughly after John Snow’s theory claimed that cholera was spread through the water John Snow was an English physician who is today considered one of the fathers of modern epidemiology, the branch of medicine that deals with the distribution and control of diseases relating to health. Finally, doctors could see cholera in a new light and were able to find better means of protection and prevention for its victims. Today, doctors recognize the germ theory of disease which states that some diseases are caused by microorganisms, and not just by “bad

In the very first chapter, Steven Johnson begins to set the scene of how the overpopulation of London coupled with extreme levels of poverty created the perfect opportunity for Cholera to spread in the rapid manner that it did. On page one it states; “These were the London underclasses, at least a hundred thousand strong. So immense were their numbers that had the scavengers broken off and formed their own city, it would have been the fifth-largest in all of England.” Johnson mentions that the city of London had become a city of Scavengers, consisting of; bone-pickers, pure-finders, dredgermen, sewer-hunters and night-soil men. However, the harshest reflection of the Cholera epidemic of 1854 is conveyed by John Snow himself. On page 59 it states; “The young Snow observed

Cholera most likely originated in India as many as 1,000 years ago. The earliest documentation of recorded symptoms is from a medical report written in 1563. Later, the first cholera pandemic initiated in 1817 when the bacterium spread from India to Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Russia, the East African coast and the Middle East and lasted until 1823. Modernization eventually increased the extent of the illness through providing means by which the bacteria could spread. On its own, Cholera would have remained separated from the rest of the world by miles of land and sea, but technological innovations connected the continents, and it did not take long for the bacteria to infect the precise human beings who would provide them safe travel. In 1826, unknowing merchants inadvertently carried the disease over trade

The year is 1849 and so far I have discovered several things about the cholera outbreak in London. My colleagues assume that the cause of cholera is caused by poison carried in the air that results from decaying matter (Fairbanks and Candelaria 10). However, I disagree with my colleagues in their belief of the miasma theory (Mckenzie 13). I have constructed a theory that the disease is spread by person-to-person contact and the material causing the cholera, must be in fact, swallowed and introduced into the alimentary canal (Fairbanks and Candelaria 10). My experience with the disease shows that not everyone who treats a sick person becomes sick, and others get sick even with the absence of a sick person in close proximity (Fairbanks and Candelaria 10). I have found that physicians who practice superior cleanliness do not get cholera. Cholera outbreak also seems to be worse among working class people, poor cleanliness seems to be what contributes to the spread of the disease (Fairbanks and Candelaria 10). The sanitary conditions of the city are not well by any means. The city is overcrowded, streets were unpaved, filthy, and heaped with trash and garbage (McKenzie 11). Most people get their drinking water from a water pump that is in close proximity to their house.

Dysentery Dysentery was especially nasty back in medieval times. Dysentery is very serious diarrhea and in olden times it caused a third of all babies to die before they reached the age of one. It was caused by bacteria in drinking water. This was because there was no way to get rid of sewage easily at this time and sometimes the sewage got into the drinking water which caused the germs to pass into the drinking water as well.

A Cholera pandemic devastated Europe between 1829 and 1851, and was first fought by the use of what Foucault called "social medicine", which focused on flux, circulation of air,

In 1854 cholera swiftly took over in just one street in London killing over 600 people in a little more than a week. Cholera first started in India and spread to England when the british arrived there. Now that you know this let’s find out what cholera even is first of all.

Experts were called in to find the source and they knew it was caused by food or drink

The 19th century in the United States is marked as one of the most revolutionary periods in medical history. This is due to the fact that science and statistical analysis were integrated in proving the cause of urban plagues such as typhus, yellow fever, and cholera. Louis-René Villermé and other hygienists came onto the scene in the 1830-1840’s to investigate the epidemiology of the 19th century diseases, and concluded that there was a significant correlation between disease and poverty; epidemics such as cholera, nearly always caused more deaths in the poor population than the rich. This had to do with the rich having more resources to practice hygiene and thus able to live in sanitary conditions. Villermé, a French public health advocate,

Vibrio cholera is a gram negative rod shaped bacteria which colonises the human gut causing acute diarrheal disease and leads to frequent epidemics around the world. In 2014 190, 549 cholera cases were reported to the World Health Organisation (Global Health Observatory Data 2014) , however the true number is likely to be far higher as there are many greatly affected locations which have poor or nonexistent data. Vibrio cholera is currently treated by the use of oral antibiotics coupled with rehydration therapy however the bacteria are now developing resistance and new treatments must be produced in order to prevent further epidemics and unnecessary deaths. This essay will discuss the pathogenesis of Vibrio cholera bacteria along with antibiotic treatment of cholera and its methods of antibiotic resistance.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Márquez delivers a tale of love set in Colombia in a time amidst disease and civil war. The symptoms of lovesickness are described as the same as cholera, and the conflict of the war mirrors the quarrels of love. The conflicted love tale begins with Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza experiencing young love. The two exchanged letters, filled with passion by Florentino, yet their relationship was forbidden. Yet when Dr. Juvenal Urbino was determined to marry Fermina, her father and even members of the church approved. Advocates of Urbino’s advances served as opposition to love when the love came from Florentino. Eventually as multiple hands force her to succumb to the pursuit of Urbino, Fermina finds herself in a loveless

The cholera virus infects mainly humans, but rare cases were also found in other mammals, such as dogs and bison. The bacterium that causes cholera is mainly found in places where a main source for drinking water is contaminated with fecal matter³. Cholera is estimated to affect about 3 through 5 million people annually, and it causes 100,000 - 120,000 deaths each year as well. Symptoms for cholera typically begin to show up within 2-3 days but cases have been reported where it took upwards of 5 days for individuals to begin to feel symptoms of the disease².