p. 83 | The Cholera Coming

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 13, 1866

The Cholera Coming.

Next summer we are to have the cholera. Its course so far has been just the same as its course in previous visitations, and next summer it will be due in this country. Thousands of the inhabitants of New York will be in the full vigor of health one day, and the next will be hastily borne to their final resting place. A universal panic will seize upon our people; all who can get away will flee from the pestilence; business will be prostrated; and general gloom and stagnation will take the place of our present prosperity.

And yet, all this can be prevented. There is no necessity for the prevalence of the cholera in this city next summer. While the causes of most diseases are hidden from knowledge, the cause of cholera has been positively ascertained. It is filth. The proof of this is conclusive. The progress of the disease in its several epidemics has been carefully watched and faithfully recorded; its history is remarkably full and minute; and, without exception, it has attacked filthy cities only, and it has prevailed only in the filthy portions of the cities which it has attacked.

We have before us a report made to the Citizens' Association of New York, by their council of Hygiene and Public Health, on the subject of the cholera. This council is composed of the leading physicians of the city—men of the very highest position for learning and character—and their report treats the subject with the masterly ability which was to be expected. It traces the progress of the cholera in each of its visitations, and shows that in all places the one cause of its prevalence was want of cleanliness.

The following are a few among the numerous facts cited in proof of this:—

"In the city of Buffalo, where there was fearful mortality from the epidemic of 1849, its principal ravages were witnessed in the filthy and undrained sections of the city, and in the purlieus of poverty, vice, and fevers along the canal. In Sandusky, where nearly one-third the resident population died in a single month, Dr. Ackley states that a stench pervaded the streets. At Louisville, Ky., the centers of the epidemic were associated with filth, malaria and crowding. In Cincinnati, where the epidemic killed 5,314 persons, out of a population of 116,108, it was first associated with filth and crowding. In St. Louis, 4,557 inhabitants perished out of 50,000. Dr. McPheeters reported that the epidemic elected as its chief centers the crowded tenant buildings, the streets and dwellings alongside the stagnant ponds and open ditches that then abounded in that city; also that seven-tenths of the mortality was among the German and Irish population. In New Orleans, when the epidemic appeared, the streets and gutters were filled with filth so that even the Board of Health declared that "the elements of putrefaction had accumulated fearfully in every direction, until the atmosphere was polluted by poisonous exhalations in which a sickly acid smell predominated."

The report then cites numerous proofs that by proper attention to cleanliness, the pestilence may be avoided; we select two of these:—

"In various towns and cities of England, the actual benefits of preventive measures, the sanitary works of cleansing, drainage and ventilation, have been fully tested. For example, the city of Worcester, on the river Severn, having been twice scourged by cholera, undertook to avert the later epidemics by means of effectual cleansing and efficient sanitary regulations. The result was, that while the pestilence swept through the neighboring cities and villages, the populous city of Worcester escaped, 'and the destroyer of uncleanly cities made a passover with the people of Worcester, for on every lintel and door-post was written, 'cleanliness, cleanliness.' Not a house was entered, and the town was saved in the midst of the most frightful desolation.'

"In Philadelphia, the cholera broke out and made some progress in the districts of Moyamensing and Southwark, where the work of cleansing was incomplete. But the citizens had anticipated the coming pestilence by the most comprehensive and energetic effort to effectually purge their city of all nuisances, and all the known causes that produce or localize disease; 2,970 privies were cleansed; 340 houses were cleaned by authority; 188 ponds were drained; 66 rag and bone shops were closed, etc., and in all, the city removed upward of 6,000 separate sources of nuisances and disease. Cholera sent but 474 persons to their graves in Philadelphia, while in the city of New York it claimed 5,071 dead.

Is there not in this energetic community, sufficient energy, is there not among this provident people, enough provident spirit, to arouse us to take hold of the work, and avert this awful pestilence, when it can be so surely done?—Scientific American.