Chapter IX: Asiatic Cholera (12)

[1527] In the hamlet adjoining a cotton-mill at Hinds, near Bury, consisting of thirty cottages in a row between the mill lade and the canal, wretchedly built, without chimneys, with windows that would not open, the inmates sleeping four or five in a bed, there were 32 cases of cholera with 7 deaths, but none of these were in persons who worked in the mill. Gaulter, u. s. citing Goodlad. He cites also Flint, of Stockport, for the rarity of attacks among the mill workers in that town. See also Samuel Gaskell, “Malignant Cholera in Manchester,” _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._ XL. 52. The microbic theory, or, as it was then called by Sir Henry Holland and others, the “hypothesis of insect life,” was happily thought of by a working cotton-spinner in Manchester to explain the immunity of the mill-workers in 1832. Gaulter (u. s. p. 120) gives in correct English what would probably have been said in the vernacular as follows: “I’ve been thinkin’, Maister,” said a spinner to Mr Sowden, millowner, “as how th’ cholery comes o’ hinsecks that smo’ as we corn’d see ’em, an’ they corn’d live i’ factories for th’ ’eät and th’ ile. Me an’ my mates wor speakin’ o’t last neet, an’ we o’ on us thowt th’ saäm thing.” Hahnemann, cited by the _Times_, 17 July, 1831, believed that the cholera insect escaped from the eye, and fastened upon the hair, skin, clothes, &c. of other persons. The common microscopic objects uniformly found in the choleraic discharges by later observers have been vibrios, of which half-a-dozen, or perhaps a dozen, varieties have been distinguished. One of these was somewhat audaciously named the “cholera germ” or “comma bacillus of cholera” by Dr R. Koch, who went to Calcutta in 1884. All vibrios, which have a corkscrew form when in motion, are apt to assume the comma form when at rest.

[1528] _Times_, Sept. 5, 1832.

[1529] John Addington Symonds, “Progress and Causes of Cholera in Bristol, 1832.” _Trans. Prov. Med. Surg. Assoc._ III. 170.

[1530] Some cases were detailed by Edward Blackman, M.D., _Lond. Med. Gaz._ 1832, pp. 473, 546.

[1531] Thomas Shapter, M.D., _The History of the Cholera in Exeter in 1832_. London, 1849, pp. 297.

[1532] Besides the papers or books already cited, accounts were published for the following places: Warrington, by Mr Glazebrook, secretary to the Local Board of Health; Oxford, by Rev. V. Thomas; Hull, by James Alderson, M.D.; Kendal, by Thomas Proudfoot, M.D. (_Edin. Med. and Surg. J._ XXXIX. 85); various places by J. Y. Simpson, M.D. (_ibid._ XLIX. 358); Tynemouth, by E. H. Greenhow, M.D. (_Trans. Epid. Soc._ 1861); London, by Halma-Grand (_Relation_ etc. Paris, 1832), and by Gaselee and Tweedie (Lond. 1832). There are also various minor notices: for Whittlesea (_Lond. Med. Gaz._ I. 1832, p. 448), Hutton, Yorkshire (_ibid._ II. 1832, p. 316), York (_Lancet_, 13 Oct. 1832, p. 72), Cheltenham, showing how it was kept free (_ibid._ Nov. 10, p. 210), St Heliers, Jersey (_Lond. Med. Surg. J._ II. 359), Derby (_ibid._ 11. 383).

[1533] The daily mortality in Paris at the beginning of the epidemic was as follows (_Annual Register_, 1832, p. 318):

Days Cholera
deaths

March 27-31 98
April 1 79
2 168
3 212
4 242
5 351
6 416
7 582
8 769
9 861
10 848
11 769
12 768
13 816
14 692
15 567
16 572

To the 16th of April the deaths were about 8700; before the end of the month the total was nearly doubled. As the whole cholera mortality of Paris in 1832 was about 19,000, April must have had much the greater part of it.

[1534] Proudfoot, _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._ XXXIX. 99.

[1535] Graves, who was a strong contagionist (l. c. 1848-49), cites the instances of nuns, nurses and porters at Tuam, and of medical men at Sligo.

[1536] G. D. Dermott, lecturer in Anatomy and Surgery, _Lond. Med. and Surg. Journ._ 1832, p. 274.

[1537] John Parkin, surgeon H.E.I.C.S., “Cause, Nature and Treatment of Cholera.” _Lond. Med. and Surg. Journ._ 1 Sept. 1832.

[1538] Graves, _Clinical Medicine_, 1843, p. 700: “I could bring forward the names of many medical men in Dublin whose lives, I am happy to say, were saved by the use of this remedy.”

[1539] Paterson, u. s. for the fishing village of Collieston, Aberdeenshire: “In most instances where the lancet was used at the proper period little else was required. The patient, although in an apparently hopeless state at the time of my visit, was in these instances not unfrequently in the course of twenty-four hours out of danger.”

[1540] A correspondent of the _Lond. Med. Gaz._ Sept. 1832, p. 731, dating from Warrington, proved by a statistical arrangement of 103 cases of cholera, that the saline treatment was nearly certain recovery, that the same combined with blood-letting was certain recovery, that blood-letting alone was certain death, and that opium with stimulants, and Morison’s pill, were each uniformly followed by a fatal result.

Cases Deaths Percentage
of recoveries

Aged, neglected or seen too late 30 30 0
Obstinately refused medicine 4 4 0
Treated by opium and stimulants 23 23 0
" by Morison’s pill 3 3 0
" by blood-letting 13 13 0
" by blood-letting and salines 7 0 100
" by salines alone 23 2 92·3
--- -- ---
103 75 27 per cent.

[1541] _Quarterly Review_, CXVIII. 256.

[1542] Reported by Brewster to J. Y. Simpson, _Edin. Med. Surg. Journ._ XLIX. (1838), p. 368.

[1543] _Glas. Med. Journ._ VI. (1833), p. 366. Stark says, perhaps for Edinburgh, that cholera recurred in the end of 1833 and beginning of 1834, with a high degree of fatality.

[1544] Edmond Sharkey, M.B., _Dubl. J. Med. Sc._ XVI. 13. Of 28 houses or cabins (nearly all in three hamlets) which together had 76 cases, 16 cabins had each two cases, 8 had each three, 1 had four, 2 had each five, and 1 had six. The type of sickness was the same as in 1832-33.

[1545] R. Green, M.D., _Lancet_, 14 April, 1838, p. 83: true Asiatic cholera began at Youghal in the second week of December, 1837, and lasted two months, about 200 having been attacked: “two of my relatives, Miss A. ---- and Mrs K. ----, died in December of cholera, one in fourteen hours, the other in ten hours.”

[1546] Deaths from Cholera in the Coventry House of Industry:

1838.

Jan. Jan. Jan. Jan. Jan. Feb. Total
7-11 12-16 17-21 22-26 27-31 1-5

7 4 15 20 7 2 55

Twenty-seven were males and twenty-eight females. The ages were as follow:

under 1-5 5-10 10-20 20-40 40-60 60-80 80-90 Total
one

1 6 4 4 3 8 20 9 55

--_Second Report of the Registrar-General_, p. 98.

[1547] Stark, _Ed. Med. and Surg. Journ._ LXXI. (1849), p. 388; W. Robertson, _Month. Journ. Med. Sc._ IX. (1849). The other outbreaks reported in that part of Scotland (_ibid._) were slight--at Dalkeith, Haddington, Borrowstowness.

[1548] Easton, _Glas. Med. Journ._ V. 444.

[1549] Sutherland, _Report of the Board of Health_.

[1550] Sutherland, _Report_, u. s.; Grieve, _Month. J. Med. Sc._ IX. 777. Barker, _ibid._ 940 (gives good account of the stormy weather).

[1551] _Month. Journ. Med. Sc._ IX. 783, 857, 1011, X. 403.

[1552] _Ibid._ IX. 1009.

[1553] Sutherland, _Report_, u. s. The year 1847, in which there was no cholera, had been much more fatal in the chief towns of Scotland, than either 1848 or 1849, owing to the great prevalence of typhus (Stark):

_Deaths from all causes._

1846 1847 1848 1849

Edinburgh 4594 6706 5475 4807
Glasgow 10854 18071 12475 12231
Dundee 1531 2520 2146 2312
Paisley 1429 2068 1552 1712
Leith 801 955 1212 1066
Greenock 1087 2214 1289 2344
Aberdeen 1315 1466 2366

[1554] H. MacCormac to Graves, _Dub. Journ. Med. Sc._ N. S. VII. 245.

[1555] Most of the information on the cholera of 1849 in England comes from two sources: (1) the _Report of the General Board of Health on the Epidemic Cholera of 1848 and 1849_ (Parl. papers, 1850), containing the detailed reports of Mr R. D. Grainger for London, and of Dr John Sutherland for various other towns; and (2) the _Quarterly Reports of the Registrar-General for the year 1849_. See also note 3, p. 846.

[1556] Sutherland, _Report_, u. s. p. 121. At Sheffield (_ibid._ p. 108) a sudden outbreak of diarrhoea occurred on 26 August over the whole town; 5319 cases of it were known, with only 76 cases of cholera and 46 deaths.

[1557] Henry Cooper, “On the Cholera Mortality in Hull during the epidemic of 1849,” _Journ. Statist. Soc._ XVI. 347. The total is higher than that in the Table.

[1558] Sutherland, _Report_, u. s., with map.

[1559] For Bristol, Sutherland (p. 126) cites Goldney: “In a certain lodging-house there were 35 attacks and 33 deaths during the epidemic of 1832.... Out of the same house in 1849, 64 people were turned, of whom 49 were sent to the House of Refuge.” Not one case of cholera occurred among these, but many attacks of diarrhoea, which was general all through the epidemic, especially along the Frome.

[1560] The epidemic in the small Devonshire fishing village of Noss Mayo near Plympton St Mary, was very fully investigated by A. C. Maclaren, _Journ. Statist. Soc._ XIII. (1850), p. 103. The Oxford epidemic (75 deaths) was described by Greenhill and Allen in the _Ashmolean Society Reports_. For Tynemouth, see Greenhow, _Trans. Epid. Soc._ The volume by Baly and Gull, _Reports on Epidemic Cholera drawn up at the desire of the Cholera Committee Roy. Col. Phys._ London, 1854, is in great part a review of the epidemic of 1849, in the form of a general discussion of the whole problem of Asiatic cholera. A subcommittee of the College also published a _Report on the nature of the microscopic bodies found in the intestinal discharges of Cholera_, London, 1849.

[1561] Farr, “Influence of elevation on the mortality of Cholera.” _Journ. Statist. Soc._ XV. (1852), p. 155, and in the Reports of the Registrar-General.

[1562] C. Barham, M.B., “Tavistock Parish Register,” _Journ. Statist. Soc._ IV. 37.

[1563] Middleton, “Sanitary Statistics of Salisbury,” _ibid._ XXVII. (1864), p. 541.

[1564] _Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the late outbreak of Cholera in Newcastle, Gateshead and Tynemouth._ Parl. papers, 1854, pp. xl and 580.

[1565] The most elaborate and minute account of an epidemic on this occasion was that for Oxford, _Memoir on the Cholera at Oxford in the year 1854_. By H. W. Acland, M.D., in which all the points in the problem of cholera are illustrated from the easily surveyed local circumstances.

[1566] The registration district of Bideford had 46 deaths in 1854, the only large total in the West country. Kingsley’s graphic picture of the cholera of 1854 in _Two Years Ago_ may have corresponded to these naked figures in the registration tables; but no place in Cornwall, in which county the scene appears to be laid, could have furnished so considerable an epidemic as the novelist describes, a few places in it having had each some half-dozen deaths.

[1567] More than half in the end of 1853.

[1568] Nearly all in the end of 1853.

[1569] It was reported on by three commissioners, Dr Donald Fraser and Messrs Thomas Hughes and J. M. Ludlow, in the _Report of the Committee for Scientific Inquiries, Cholera Epidemic of 1854_. Appendix.

[1570] John Snow, M.D., _On the mode of communication of Cholera_. London, 1849, 2nd ed. 1855.

[1571] _General Board of Health, Report on Scientific Inquiries_, 1854, p. 52.

[1572] J. W. Begbie, _Ed. Med. and Surg. Journ._ April, 1855, p. 250.

[1573] _Glas. Med. Journ._ N. S. II. 127; III. 116, 500; John Crawford, M.D., “Report of Cases in the Cholera Hosp.” _ibid._ III. 48.

[1574] W. Alexander, M.D., _Edin. Med. Journ._ II. 86. The _Edin. Med. Journ._ I. July, 1855, p. 81, contains a few lines of abstract of a paper by W. T. Gairdner on the diffusion of cholera in the remote districts of Scotland. Information on the subject is invited, but it does not appear that any full account of the cholera of 1854 in Scotland was published. It is known to have been in Aberdeen.

[1575] _Census of Ireland 1861_, Part III. vol. 2, p. 23.

[1576] Compiled from Grainger’s report for 1849, the Registrar-General’s Reports for 1854 and 1866, a table in _Lancet_, I. 1867, p. 125, and, for 1866, a table by Radcliffe, in _Rep. Med. Off. Priv. Council for 1866_, p. 339.

[1577] Radcliffe, _Rep. Med. Off. Privy Council for 1866_, p. 294.

[1578] Scoutetten, _Histoire médicale et topographique du Cholera Morbus_, Metz, 1831; and _Histoire chronologique du Cholera_, Paris, 1870. David Craigie, M.D., “Remarks on the History and Etiology of Cholera,” _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._ XXXIX. (1833), 332. John Macpherson, M.D., _Annals of Cholera_, London, 1872 and 1884. N. C. Macnamara, _A History of Asiatic Cholera_, London, 1876.

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Transcriber's note:

Footnote 427 appears on page 233 of the text, but there is no corresponding marker on the page.

Footnote marker 562 appears on page 312 of the text, but there is no corresponding footnote on the page.