Nineteenth Century cholera experiences illustrate a people's reaction to catastrophic disease, which they believed was incurable and unpreventable. The great epidemics of mankind describe human behavior in times of unavoidable and incurable crisis. Their experiences tended to reinforce their belief in miasmas or divine retribution. National and state days of prayer were appointed to appease an angry God.ĭuring these frightening times, the people learned nothing about the infectiousness of cholera or about its prevention through sanitation. Local merchants tried unsuccessfully to calm panic by suppressing information. Flight, added to mortality, caused virtual depopulation of many small towns.ĭrinking water was drawn from rivers or shallow wells, often near seeping cesspools. The disease was blamed on miasmas arising from local causes, so flight from affected localities were logical and common. Small towns of the American Midwest were not spared. In mid-19th Century, cholera was epidemic throughout the world.
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