Cholera was a feared disease that attacked a range of countries from every part of the world. It brought about a sense of horror due to its horrendous symptoms and relatively high mortality rate. This fear was no less apparent for the inhabitants of Philadelphia especially after reports were written about towns such as Montreal and Quebec. One particular report written by the “Commission” (Samuel Jackson, Chas. D. Meigs, and Richard Harlan) and appointed by the “Sanitary Board of the City Councils” had a purpose of providing information about the cholera epidemic in Canada for the inhabitants of Philadelphia. The authors used the help of physicians and Boards of Health from various towns to discern the impact of the epidemic. Many groups of individuals were affected by the disease, specifically the English, immigrants, and the Canadians (French Canadians and Lower Canadians). The English were known to maintain the customs they brought from their country which focused on “a good …show more content…
Even though the government of Montreal was aware of the cholera epidemic that was occurring in other towns, the Board of Health was too late in establishing preventative sanitary measures in order to ensure the safety of the inhabitants. There was a lack of measures enforced that dealt with the “cleansing of the city, the removal of nuisances, the accommodation of the emigrants,” and other measures to alleviate the spread of the disease. By knowing how the Board of Health of Montreal dealt with the disease and what little was done beforehand to contain it, Philadelphia was able to create measures that could prevent the disease from spreading. For example, whenever the beginning stages of the disease were apparent, there would be prompt medical assistance made
In “The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney 1739-1762,” she described how the settlers that were constantly insulted by the Indians and small pox rages as “ a great cloud over this province.” The impact of smallpox was awful. The small pox causes all business to stop on Charles Town making the economy go downhill. “....a violent kind of small pox rages in Charles Town that must puts a stop to all business.” (Doc E)
The book also mentions how pints and pints of blood were drawn from fever patients in order to try to rid their body of infection. In reality, this was a very common procedure performed by a popular physician, Dr, Benjamin Rush, to help cure those infected with the fever (“The Yellow Fever Epidemic of Philadelphia, 1793”). The book explains how by the end of the epidemic over 4,000 people from Philadelphia had died and thousands of others had fled to the country. “The epidemic depopulated Philadelphia: 5,000 out of a population of 45,000 died, and chronicler Mathew Carey estimated that another 17,000 fled” (“The Yellow Fever Epidemic of Philadelphia, 1793”).
Undertaking a new role, government officials in Europe became responsible for setting restrictions for the common good, and limiting the plague’s victims. Thus, pest-houses were introduced, hospitals where infected citizens were interned for months against their will. New jobs also rose, including body removers who carted the sick to pest-houses, grave-diggers who buried dead from the streets, and fumigators who disinfected the houses of the deceased. Throughout smallpox’s purge of lives, neither quarantine nor any other organized measure was imposed to reduce deaths. The fragmentation of Native Americans into many different tribes prevented an overarching government from installing or upholding policy such as in Europe.
“Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health” was written by Judith Walzer Leavitt, a historian whose careful research and talented writing gave rise to one of the most well-known accounts of Typhoid Mary’s life. The focus of the book, as its very title suggests, is on Mary Mallon, the young woman whose individual rights to freedom were sacrificed for the public’s health and safety. Born in Ireland, Mary Mallon moved to New York as a teenager and soon became a domestic cook serving in wealthy American households. Unfortunately, the epidemic of typhoid fever was spreading like wildfire through the homes, including the ones where Mallon worked. When the disease hit the household of the banker Charles Warren, the family hired the sanitary engineer George Soper who was well-known for his ‘shoe-leather’ investigations.
Even with a name to the disease the spread could not be stopped. Residents were falling ill daily, and most thought infection spread through smell. They referred to this killer smell as "miasma”. The main character in the novel, John Snow, had a different theory about the spread of Cholera. He believed it spread through ingestion of contaminated drinking water; specifically, the water found at the Broad Street Pump.
The emigrants on the oregon trail faced the most difficulty trying to survive and thrive in the west because of disease, accidents, and weather. Due to disease and illness, emigrants on the Oregon trail had a hard time trying to thrive and survive in the west. Disease was everywhere and people couldn’t avoid it. The National Park Service’s (NPS) article on the Oregon Trail states that “Cholera results from a waterborne bacteria that thrives
The epidemic of yellow fever crept over Philadelphia like a rat does through the sewer. The city of Philadelphia was suffering from yellow fever and it was up to the Philadelphia doctors and the French doctors to cure it. The victims of the yellow fever we're counting on both the French and the Philadelphia doctors to cure the fever. The epidemic had its major break out in Philadelphia summer 1973.
Smallpox continued to be a problem throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, affecting populations on a large scale.” It was one of the primary annihilator’s of the native indigenous population of the Americas during the first arrivals of the Europeans who brought it with them. One notable incident which many believe led to a severe outbreak of the smallpox amongst various Indian tribes in the Ohio Valley in 1763 was the case of the British Army giving away blankets from a pox hospital with the hopes of passing the disease onto the Indians they were fighting. Gill (2004) shares purported correspondence between two British officers with the following:
This was the dark force of misinformation and lack of information. People back then had little to no idea about the many different kinds of illnesses that would have been afflicting them during those simple
London’s cholera epidemic had several key players that contributed to the overall state of the epidemic. Arguably the most influential of these players is John Snow. Firstly, Snow was one of the few people at the time who did not believe that miasma was responsible for the spread of cholera. He would be paramount in the eventual downfall of miasma as a theory. More directly, Snow went to a meeting of the governors of St James Parish, “insisting that the community needed to remove the pump as soon as possible.”
There actually was a yellow fever outbreak that hit Philadelphia in 1793. It was one of the worst epidemics in US history. In almost three months it killed nearly 10% of the city’s population, which is around 5,000 people. Many had fled the city even Congressman as mentioned in the book, along with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Since medicine wasn’t very developed at the time many doctors did drain blood from patients, trying to get rid of the “pestilence”.
The American-French Doctors in Philadelphia, 1793, tried to treat yellow fever. Foreign ships brought the deadly infected mosquitoes to America. People got this disease by blood to blood contact, which is when an infected mosquito bites someone, and then bites another. Now, because of this blood to blood contact, over 4000 people died. So now, let 's get to the facts.
It is clear that overpopulation and unsanitary conditions are to blame for the cholera outbreak. Issues of diagnosing cholera became difficult, due to society’s previous views on the cause of disease. Miasma became the believed and accepted cause of the outbreak. Snow’s overall difficulty would come from disproving this hypothesis, along with convincing individuals that cholera was infact a water borne illness, originating from Broad St well.
The Black Plague During the Renaissance period a disease was brought to Europe that is known as the “Black Plague”. A ship came from China that brought rats infested with fleas, carrying the plague to Sicily. Many people aboard the ship were already dead from the disease and the ship was ordered to leave the harbor, but it was too late. Sicily was then overcome by the disease and it spread through the trade routes all over Europe.
The “The Ghost Map” is a book written by Steven Johnson. In the book, the author explains to us why urban planning is necessary to prevent deadly diseases, such as the deadly cholera outbreak. In 1854, Cholera seized London with incredible force. A capital of more than 2 million people, London had just become as a one of the first modern cities in the society. But lacking the foundation necessary to sustain its dense population - garbage extraction, clean water sources, sewer systems - the city has grown to be the ideal breeding ground for a terrifying epidemic no one understands how to cure.