Read Online Knowledge in the Time of Cholera by Owen Whooley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Owen Whooley
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âThe city is much deserted & the panic prevails.â Still Pintard stood fast, comforted in the belief that cholera only attacked âintemperate dissolute & filthy peopleâ (Pintard 1832, 72). By the end of the month, however, even this false hope was dashed, as he reported the deaths of a friendly neighbor, a âhard-workingâ mechanic, and three physicians. Faced with the magnitude of the epidemic, Pintard, like many, turned to religion. Although President Andrew Jackson refused to proclaim a national day of prayer and fasting, state governments did, and Pintard abided by New Jerseyâs July 26 day of fasting.
Faces of cholera, from Horatio Bartley,
Illustrations of Cholera Asphyxia in Its Different Stages, Selected from Cases Treated at the Cholera Hospital, Rivington Street
(New York: S. H. Jackson, 1832). Collection of the New York Historical Society.
While Pintard captured the panic among the living, an apothecary named Horatio Bartley (1832) memorialized the dead, sketching haunting images of cholera victims from the Rivington Street Hospital. His sketches show blue-hued, skeletal faces, writhing in pain. The victimsâ sunken eyes betray no awareness, revealing another of choleraâs more unnerving symptomsââthe entire loss of all consent, sympathy, or catenation . . . between the brain and the nervous system, and the heart and the sanguiferous systemâ (
BMSJ
1833a, 271). Victims were literally severed from their corporeality, assuming a ghostly countenance.
As summer went on, the blue visages of cholera became a common sight throughout the United States. By the end of the epidemic in New York City, where cholera deaths reached their peak on July 19, 3,515 people had died out of a population of 250,000. With riverboats its chief mode of transportation (Chambers 1938), cholera spread south, first toward Philadelphia and reaching the South in late August. By late September cholera had âextended as far south as Edenton, North Carolina, and westward to St. Louisâ (
BMSJ
1832e, 253), with New Orleans suffering the brunt of the outbreak. It also traveled westward via the Erie Canal and the Cumberland Road (Grob 2002, 105). Local attempts to pull together ad hoc medical committees to mount a defense were unsuccessful. Towns employed a variety of measures to prevent the epidemic to no avail, constructing roadblocks, imposing quarantines, even shooting cannons into the air in an effort to alter the poisonous atmosphere. Wheeling, West Virginia, undertook one of the more unusual plans:
To test the virtue of coal smoke and heat in staying the epidemic, cart loads of coal were deposited at intervals of fifty yards along each side of the principal streets and fired; the volumes of dense black smoke enshrouding the townâdeserted streets, except by the frequent funeral trainâsorrow and alarm depicted on every face, formed a scene more easily imagined than described; its impressions are still very vivid in my mind. (Hildreth 1868, 228)
Of the largest U.S. cities, only Boston and Charleston were spared.
Yet, as quickly as it came, cholera went. On August 15, the board of health in New York started closing down its cholera hospitals and two weeks later, it disbanded the Medical Council that had been established to combat cholera. By October, the disease had all but disappeared, and while sporadic cases were reported in 1833 and 1834, it would be fifteen years until the next epidemic. For those who lived through the epidemic the experience would linger. Pintard (1832, 92) admitted, âI shall never forget the solemn impressions of the late dreadful month of July, when the face of heaven appeared to be obscured with a somber shroud of pestilence and death.â Still, life returned to normalcy. However, for physicians, the cholera epidemic would have ramifications far beyond painful memories, as it ushered in a long period of crisis for American medicine.
Faces of cholera, from Horatio Bartley,
Illustrations of Cholera Asphyxia in Its Different Stages, Selected from Cases Treated at the Cholera Hospital, Rivington Street
(New York: S. H. Jackson, 1832). Collection of the New York Historical Society.
While Pintard captured the panic among the living, an apothecary named Horatio Bartley (1832) memorialized the dead, sketching haunting images of cholera victims from the Rivington Street Hospital. His sketches show blue-hued, skeletal faces, writhing in pain. The victimsâ sunken eyes betray no awareness, revealing another of choleraâs more unnerving symptomsââthe entire loss of all consent, sympathy, or catenation . . . between the brain and the nervous system, and the heart and the sanguiferous systemâ (
BMSJ
1833a, 271). Victims were literally severed from their corporeality, assuming a ghostly countenance.
As summer went on, the blue visages of cholera became a common sight throughout the United States. By the end of the epidemic in New York City, where cholera deaths reached their peak on July 19, 3,515 people had died out of a population of 250,000. With riverboats its chief mode of transportation (Chambers 1938), cholera spread south, first toward Philadelphia and reaching the South in late August. By late September cholera had âextended as far south as Edenton, North Carolina, and westward to St. Louisâ (
BMSJ
1832e, 253), with New Orleans suffering the brunt of the outbreak. It also traveled westward via the Erie Canal and the Cumberland Road (Grob 2002, 105). Local attempts to pull together ad hoc medical committees to mount a defense were unsuccessful. Towns employed a variety of measures to prevent the epidemic to no avail, constructing roadblocks, imposing quarantines, even shooting cannons into the air in an effort to alter the poisonous atmosphere. Wheeling, West Virginia, undertook one of the more unusual plans:
To test the virtue of coal smoke and heat in staying the epidemic, cart loads of coal were deposited at intervals of fifty yards along each side of the principal streets and fired; the volumes of dense black smoke enshrouding the townâdeserted streets, except by the frequent funeral trainâsorrow and alarm depicted on every face, formed a scene more easily imagined than described; its impressions are still very vivid in my mind. (Hildreth 1868, 228)
Of the largest U.S. cities, only Boston and Charleston were spared.
Yet, as quickly as it came, cholera went. On August 15, the board of health in New York started closing down its cholera hospitals and two weeks later, it disbanded the Medical Council that had been established to combat cholera. By October, the disease had all but disappeared, and while sporadic cases were reported in 1833 and 1834, it would be fifteen years until the next epidemic. For those who lived through the epidemic the experience would linger. Pintard (1832, 92) admitted, âI shall never forget the solemn impressions of the late dreadful month of July, when the face of heaven appeared to be obscured with a somber shroud of pestilence and death.â Still, life returned to normalcy. However, for physicians, the cholera epidemic would have ramifications far beyond painful memories, as it ushered in a long period of crisis for American medicine.
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