Read Online Knowledge in the Time of Cholera by Owen Whooley - Free Book Online

loose or watery discharges” (Atkins 1832, 65) with up to 10 percent of a person’s weight lost within hours. But cholera’s most macabre symptoms were the “cholera voice” and the surreal color of its victims. Patients took on an eerie bluish pallor just before dying, a ghastly visage of impending death. And the blue victims emitted strange sounds. One haunted doctor reported in the
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal
(
BMSJ
), “In the most deadly form of cholera there is a tone of voice, a wail, which once heard, can never be mistaken; by him, upon whose ear it has fallen in the accents of anguish, it can never be forgotten” (“Cholera Voice,” 1832, 148). More than the number dead, it was the nature of cholera that caused it to loom large in the popular imagination (Humphreys 2002).
    Cholera plunged Europe into turmoil. Hungary and France each lost over one hundred thousand people to the disease. Cholera claimed another fifty-five thousand in England. These raw mortality counts only hinted at the horrors on the ground. Europe’s inadequate infrastructure of charitable organizations and government institutions was overwhelmed. Churches were converted into makeshift hospitals, while their cemeteries swelled. A report from Paris described the deteriorating scene: “The deaths are so numerous every day that hearses have become altogether inadequate to the purposes for which they are ordinarily used, and the dead are carried to their burial places in large wagons” (
BMSJ
1832b, 254). Cholera killed its victims quicker than communities could bury them (Grob 2002, 108). Wherever it touched, cholera produced a type of “epidemic psychology” (Strong 1990) of suspicion, fear, and stigmatization. The feeble actions adopted by European governments heightened tensions, often resulting in riots fueled by rumors of physician-led conspiracies against the poor (Briggs 1961; Burrell and Gill 2005; Durey 1979; Morris 1976). Faced with the breakdown of the social fabric, many looked to the heavens, conjuring up supernatural explanations for cholera. Seizing this opportunity, shrewd religious leaders used the scourge to admonish their flocks for their moral laxity.
    Anticipating cholera jumping the Atlantic, American physicians scoured reports from Europe for any useful information on the disease. The editors at the
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal
(1831a, 5) instructed every American physician “to watch with eagle eye the progress of this dreadful malady, and to treasure up in his mind every incident in its history which may aid in forming philosophical views with regard to its treatment.” But the profuse reporting offered scant medical intelligence (Hamlin 2009, 110). Measured analyses were difficult given the circumstances. Helpless in the face of “King Cholera,” European doctors could not agree on the most basic details of the disease. Was it a new disease or a more virulent form of an old one? What was its cause? Did it prey on the weak and immoral or kill indiscriminately? Which treatments were most effective? As doctors impotently mulled these questions, deaths accumulated. Hope dwindled. Having tried “every means sanctioned by recorded experience,” a London physician voiced the futility felt by many European doctors: “To our patient, laboring under a violent and advanced attack of Spasmodic Cholera, no solid expectation of recovery could be extended” (
BMSJ
1831a, 8). Eventually, American physicians gave up on gaining any insight from abroad. An anonymous letter to the
BMSJ
(1832a, 189–190) summed up the situation:
    We have nothing, therefore, to learn from the practice of the most distinguished physicians in Europe, except to notice their errors, and to avoid the rocks and shoals upon which they have made shipwreck. Let us turn these scenes of horror to the writers of our own country. . . . Seeing the utter failure of the