The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866

"The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866," by Charles E. Rosenberg, University of Chicago Press, 1987. This 265-page paperback tells the story of cholera, one of the most deadly diseases of the nineteenth century. Rosenberg's story covers the three major epidemics through the eyes of New York city newspapers.The symptoms of cholera are characteristic. The patient experiences a sudden onset of violet vomiting, severe cramps, and diarrhea. Patients become dehydrated and often are pale and cold. Many die rapidly often within 24-hrs. The disease is thought to have originated in India. Hence, the name Asian cholera. The epidemics traveled slowly, usually with considerable forewarning. Quarantine was the usual means to delay its spread, but this method usually failed.Smallpox, the scourge of the eighteenth century had been conquered with vaccination, but cholera posed frightening new challenges. Germ theory would arrive only in the 1850s, and be accepted only in the 1890s. Medical practice was primitive. Bleeding was still a common treatment. Diseases were poorly understood. Hospitals were considered death wards for the poor; nursing an unclean profession.The cause of cholera was widely debated. Even the idea the disease was contagious was uncertain. Were the victims both exposed to the same cause, or did one catch the disease from the other? The poor living in the slums of the cities were often the victims. This was not a disease of the upper classes, so much so that if one fell to the disease, the cause was "previous indiscretions." Not surprisingly in 1849 in New York, most victims were Irish and Catholic.Slum dwellers often lacked clean drinking water and relied on privies rather than sewers. Night soil was emptied in the streets which harbored horse manure and rats. Pigs wandered the streets scavenging for food, and providing meat to the poor. Theories suggested miasmas as the cause. Others attributed the disease to God's punishment for unclean living.The association with city living caused people to flee the cities as cholera arrived. This flood of people tended to spread the disease and violate quarantines. Armed militiamen manned the quarantine lines and stories were told of shots being fired. In New York, informal health committees attempted to deal with the epidemics by setting up cholera hospitals and quarantine areas. But these places were difficult to place as people thought a cholera hospital could not be used for anything else. Riots were also common as citizens protested the presence of cholera hospitals in their area.Understanding of cholera began to change with the discoveries of John Snow of London. Rosenberg disputes the usual story that Snow proved cholera was due to water from a contaminated well by removing the pump handle. Rather his studies showing the customers of one of two water companies were more often victims was more widely accepted. Germ theory was proposed soon after, but Snow's study proved there was an infectious agent in contaminated water. The use of quarantine implies that people suspected an infectious agent long before, but the debate regarding germ theory then comes down to the identity of that agent.New York learned from the earlier epidemics and in 1866 passed a law establishing a health agency. They organized for cholera hospitals, quarantine, and to promptly identify cholera cases. Ultimately they succeeded by promptly burning the clothing and bedding of victims and disinfecting the area with chlorinated lime and "coal tar." Coal tar was presumably a source of phenols, which Lister identified as disinfectants (carbolic acid) only in 1867. Antoine-Germain Labarraque discovered the disinfecting properties of chlorinated lime in the 1820s.It seems ironic that disinfectants were known before the acceptance of germ theory, but the point seems that microorganisms cause certain conditions such as putrification of meat, and could be killed with disinfectants, but the idea that microorganisms cause disease was disputed.The success of New York's Metropolitan Board of Health in stopping the spread of cholera was widely haled. They were less successful in getting slums cleaned up, and their work did not immediately result in public water systems or sewers, but at least the benefit of a public health agency was established. This is a well documented volume which tells the various aspects of the story in detail. Bibliography. Index.

This book was boring sometimes just by nature of the topic, but it has a good narrative style - it doesn't ramble on needlessly and it shares information in the form of interesting stories. It's also a really good example of historical research. It lays out a clear groundwork in the introduction and then follows it up with tons of primary source research. Not to mention it was one of the first books to use disease to study social history. All in all not bad, probably wouldn't read it for fun personally but it was better than most assigned readings I've had to do - certainly better than any textbook.

Raising my children in Central America when the sixth world cholera pandemic reached the shores of this continent heightened my awareness as to existence of this mysterious disease. My children would bring home their cholera awareness materials from school that emphasized hand washing and clean water. Later on, I researched an incident in 1852 when Ulysses S. Grant and the U.S. 4th Infantry were devastated by cholera when passing through Panama on their way to California. However, it wasn?t until I read Rosenberg?s book that I understood how horrible a death from cholera was and yet how easy it is nowadays to treat. Rosenbery brings out so many interesting aspects of the impact of cholera on public health and the fact that the disease has only been known in the Western world for a little over 200 years. Most people think cholera is biblical. The book is an easy read for a layman and too bad it appears to be mostly used as a text book in college.

The themes of this books focus the reader on how cholera was an impetus for societal change (when it comes to the role of government in overall well being) and how its appearance was received by the varying societies of the 19th century. Certainly Rosenberg makes the effort to contrast 1832 with 1866. You'll find explicit comparisons lacking, and often his descriptions are repetitive. However, a student of medical history can glean a great deal of information from the insight he provides.

I found this book a very nice review of cholera in the US in the 19th century. My only quibble is that the author didn't really spend time between the '32 and '49 and the the '49 and '66 describing changes in the medical field that made '66 different (especially the epidemiologists who made the association between contaminated water and disease.)

Liked the book enjoy anything on history

I loved this book! It was assigned reading for my Social Welfare Policy I course and I cracked the spine expecting to drag myself through it. Not so! I loved this book! A great read, with lots of lessons and relevance today. Unfortunately, we haven't seemed to learned many of them.

Got this for my wife. She didn't like all the context around the disease, religion, government, etc. Mostly stuff that is fairly common knowledge. Only the last few pages are devoted to talking about Cholera and how they dealt with it, which is what she wanted.