Cholera
is an illness caused by a germ invading the bowels. The disease is
usually spread by contaminated water supplies. The main symptom is
watery diarrhoea which leads to fluid depletion and death from dehydration.
It has been a killer disease in Asia for over 1,000 years but the
first of a series of seven pandemics arrived in Europe in 1817.
In the summer of 1849 over 33,000 people in three months died of cholera
in Britain. Around 13,000 of tose who died lived in London.
Until the second-half of the 19th century, about 50 per cent of the
people who caught cholera died of the disease. The cause of cholera
was first identified in 1854. Since improvements have taken place
in water supply, the disease has virtually disappeared in Europe.
In the summer of 2000 a team of scientists in the United States led
by Claire Fraser deciphered the entire genetic makeup of the cholera
microbe. It is hoped that this will enable drugs or vaccines to control
the disease in the undeveloped world.
(1)
Henry Mayhew, Morning
Chronicle (24th September 1849)
We then journeyed on to London Street, down which the tidal
ditch continues its course. In No. 1 of this street the cholera first
appeared seventeen years ago, and spread up it with fearful virulence;
but this year it appeared at the opposite end, and ran down it with
like severity. As we passed along the reeking banks of the sewer the
sun shone upon a narrow slip of the water. In the bright light it
appeared the colour of strong green tea, and positively looked as
solid as black marble in the shadow - indeed it was more like watery
mud than muddy water; and yet we were assured this was the only water
the wretched inhabitants had to drink.
As we gazed in horror at it, we saw drains and sewers emptying their
filthy contents into it; we saw a whole tier of doorless privies in
the open road, common to men and women, built over it; we heard bucket
after bucket of filth splash into it, and the limbs of the vagrant
boys bathing in it seemed by pure force of contrast, white as Parian
marble.
In this wretched place we were taken to a house where an infant lay
dead of the cholera. We asked if they really did drink the water?
The answer was, "They were obliged to drink the ditch, without
they could beg or thieve a pailful of water." But have you spoken
to your landlord about having it laid on for you? "Yes, sir and
he says he will do it, and do it, but we know him better than to believe
him."
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