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sent back. The first persons attacked in the port resided on the quay and were exposed to intercourse with the shipping. It was subsequently proved that cases had occurred as far back as the 5th, 14th, and 29th of August, and were not reported, or were concealed. This was two months before the acknowledged importation of the pestilence.

There were only 97 deaths in all England in November, 1831; 282 in December; 614 in January, 1832; 708 in February; 1,519 in March; and 1,401 in April.

The emigration to Canada and New York was so great in 1832 that cholera reached both these distant places almost before it was carried from London down to Paris. On March 24, 1832, cholera broke out suddenly in Paris, and according to M. Gendrin, on the third day of its appearance he received patients from many districts in Paris into the Hotel Dieu. He observes that the patients' distant residences and opposite professions precluded the probability of their having derived their disease by contagion, or from human contact. The disease was so virulent, that of the first 98 cases 96 died. Within a week the mortality reached 500 a day, and the cases to four times that amount, and in eighteen days no less than 7,000 persons had died of it. To every one conversant with cholera this tremendous outbreak was not brought to it by the winds, but was certainly connected with water contaminated with cholera discharges and filth. It also goes without saying, that it did not reach its great proportions in three days. In fact it commenced as early as March 1st, which was no fool's day for Paris. Grisquet, the Prefect of Police, exerted himself to suppress the pestilence, but the rag-pickers rebelled against the order forbidding garbage, dirt and rubbish being thrown, as usual, in the streets and raised barricades. Others thought the disease was brought and propagated by the government, aided by physicians and apothecaries, and the latter were insulted and assaulted. In fact, the pestilence had been spreading slowly for six weeks before the great outburst, the cause of which has only been made manifest by Dr. Marey in his little brochure called "Les Eaux Contaminées et le choléra. Paris 1884." He marked on a plan of Paris every house which had had deaths from cholera, and then hunted up the water-supply. The left bank of the Seine suffered slightly, the right severely; the latter was supplied largely from the canal de L'Ourcq and the river Seine. The former at La Villette is exceeded in its amount of market boats and shipping only by Marseilles and Havre, all the filth of which goes into the canal; the water is filthy dock water; in addition many sewers empty into the canal, as others do into the Seine, and yet this nasty water was supplied to the greater part of Paris for drinking and cooking. In every epidemic in Paris, even that of last year, 1884, the canal de L'Ourcq has played the same distinctive part.

In all the epidemics in Paris and many other places the most wearisome and complicated tables are given of the age, sex and occupation and married. or single state of the sufferers, the state of the thermometer and barometer, the direction and strength of the winds; the amount of heat and rainfall; even the side of the house and the story in which the patient dwelt; the nature of the soil, etc., etc. All of which gives scarcely a gleam of the nature and causes of cholera. Fortunately the amount and kind of civic filth is often given, and occasionally a hint that the water supply was bad. All the early cases in Paris were overlooked or concealed, and it has never been made known how the pestilence arrived there. It was at Calais, from England, before it reached Paris and probably also in Havre from

Hamburg. Of 20,000 inhabitants in the Luxemburg quarter 7,552 were indigent and 13,330 well-to-do. Of the former 4,500 suffered from cholera; of the latter only 2,500. Before the advent of the epidemic in France it was reproduced in England and Ireland, especially in Hull, York and Leeds, but there were only 14,796 cases and 5,432 deaths.

I will finish with the epidemic in Europe before following it to America. Up to this time Spain and Portugal had escaped: then, the London, a transport steamer, sailed from England to Oporto, on Dec. 25, 1832, with troops for Gen. Polignac: not a nice Christmas gift, and arrived on New Year's day, 1833, having lost seven men by cholera; the disease appeared on land on Jan. 15th. Spanish quarantine was rigorously enforced, except among the troops. Every other traveler from the infected district was detained, and even threatened with death and confiscation of goods, if he did not go through all the formalities; and also all those who harbored him. But cholera broke out soon, of course, in many provinces in Spain, reached Madrid, and was even carried over to Barcelona on the east coast.

In the meantime it had been brought down from Paris to Marseilles and Toulon, and also forwarded east to Villafranca, Nice and Cannes. By August 12th it was at Turin and soon after at Genoa on the west coast of Italy. By November, 1834, it had reached Venice and Trieste on the east coast and the Adriatic sea. In October, 1836, it appeared in Naples in spite of a most rigid quarantine at the port, but it slipped in overland, from Milan and other places. The physicians traversed the streets covered from head to foot with black wrappers of wax cloth into which two pieces of glass were introduced for eye-holes. In Rome alone there were 9,372 cases and 4,519 deaths.

It soon spread down to Sicily, and is supposed to have been carried east to Malta, on June 9th, 1837, followed by 3,893 deaths among the people and 815 cases and 578 deaths in the English garrison of 3,070 men. The Mediterranean fleet suffered considerably, but only after it had touched at Palermo or Malta.

But another stream of the disease, which had been overlooked, was coming up from Mecca as early as 1831, brought there from India. Nearly one-half of the pilgrims died, especially in the Syrian caravan, and the governors of Mecca and Jeddah, the seaport of Mecca. It was carried up

to Suez and Cairo in Egypt, and from there to Alexandria on the Mediteranean in August; and had also been pushed up the old route to Asia Minor. In July it was at Constantinople, whether brought up from Egypt, or over from southern Russia, or both, no one knows. But this much is certain, that it almost reached Vienna from the west by way of France and Italy, almost before it got there from the east by way of Russia; so that at this early date there was no excuse for assuming that cholera always traveled west like the young man; especially as it was known that it had been carried east to China as early as 1821.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRST EPIDEMIC IN THE UNITED STATES, THAT OF 1832.

CHOLERA had prevailed, as we have seen, in Russia in 1829 and 1830. It reached England, Scotland and Ireland in 1831, and was first landed at Grosse Island, the quarantine station for Quebec, on April 28, 1832, by the ship Constantia from Limerick, Ireland, with 170 emigrants, of whom 29 had died of cholera on the voyage. On May 14th, the ship Robert, from Cork, arrived, having had 10 deaths from cholera. On May 28th the ship Elizabeth, from Dublin, came in with 200 passengers, and 20 deaths from cholera. On June 3d the brig Carrick, from Dublin, followed with 145 emigrants and 42 deaths from cholera. Total, 375 emigrants and 159 deaths from the pestilence. There was no proper quarantine, all who seemed well were forwarded at once from Grosse Island. The soiled clothing was not washed, and disinfection was unknown. There was constant and uninterrupted intercourse by sailing and steam vessels, which took off all who wanted to go from the quarantine to Quebec and even to Montreal.. So energetically was this done that from June 2d to 5th no less than 750 emigrants had been taken from Grosse Island to Quebec and some to Montreal, and before the end of the summer nearly 30,000 were forwarded up the river St. Lawrence. Deaths were of course so common that no special attention was paid to cholera or any other disease. So little did the Canadian authorities know about what was going on, that they long attributed the whole outbreak to the brig Carrick, and fixed the 3d day of June as the date of the first case of cholera in North America.

A glance at any school map will show that no winds except exceedingly intelligent ones could have blown cholera from England and Ireland to Quebec without first attacking Nova Scotia, Prince Edward's Island, Newfoundland, Anticosti, New Brunswick, some part of Maine, or of East Canada before reaching Quebec; nor could they have pursued a directly northwest course up the Gulf of St. Lawrence to latitude 49° and then suddenly have turned down the river St. Lawrence due southwest, without the aid of pilots, helmsmen and ships.

Up to September 2d there were 2,208 deaths from cholera in Quebec, of which 56 occurred in the first two weeks of June in Roache's emigrant boarding-house. Again it is generally supposed that the steamboat Voyageur carried cholera from Quebec to Montreal by June 9th; but we have seen that cases were sent there before that, and the Montreal officials knew as little about its commencement as did those of Quebec. In the first two weeks there were 800 deaths, and by September 1st, 1,843.

Those

From the St. Lawrence the disease was forwarded along Lake Ontario by steamboats, and by land along its northern or Canadian border. places where no passengers were allowed to land escaped. From Montreal

the pestilence commenced to descend Lake Champlain by means of emigrants and travelers toward Albany and New York. Every eye was turned toward Canada, when suddenly it appeared in the city of New York on June 24th, before it could easily be traced to any arrival from Canada, although the arrival of trunks from Leeds, Canada, was subsequently reported. If it did not come from Canada it would have required the same wonderful intelligence on the part of the winds to blow cholera past New Jersey, Long and Staten Islands, Brooklyn and Jersey City, into the heart of the lower and east part of the city. All the records of the arrival of ships at New York during April, May and June, 1832, have been removed, while those before and after are complete. Dr. Vaché and Dr. Alonzo Clark state that a cholera ship arrived at New York in June. The sick were cared for at the quarantine, and the well were shipped to the city and up the North River as rapidly as possible. There was a race of cholera from Canada and New York city to Albany, which it reached July 3d and finally caused 1,104 cases. By July 12th it was at Schenectady coming from Albany; and on the same date at Rochester from New York. July 15th it was at Buffalo among canal boatmen, and among emigrants by the 30th.

CHOLERA IN NEW YORK CITY IN 1832.

New York city should have been well prepared for the reception and proper management of cholera, but it committed almost every mistake of ignorance and prejudice, or worse, that has ever been promulgated. The diarrhoeal commencement of the disease was already well known, but it was assumed that the pestilence was in the air and not in the bodies and discharges of the sick. Because it was not directly and immediately contagious it was declared not to be even infectious. Although it was a specific and most peculiar disease, it was asserted that all its causes were only merely those of common diarrhoea, and ordinary cholera morbus.

In the official report every fanciful notion was jumped at, and all the most patent facts overlooked. It was asserted that easterly and southeasterly winds had prevailed in Canada and brought the disease across the ocean. That influenza had prevailed in 1831 and foreshadowed cholera, especially as aged and weak people could not bear full doses of Tartar emetic. That scarlet fever was malignant and often attended with diarrhoea. That intermittent fevers were common in the lower parts of the city, and sometimes showed great prostration and even collapse, when they were of the congestive kind. That cholera morbus and dysentery occurred in the winter in unusual proportions, and the air was evidently taking on an epidemic choleraic constitution. That on July 16th vomiting, diarrhoea and cramps appeared among a tribe of Indians 100 leagues from the sea, when the true disease had been in the country for more than two months. That attempts to trace cholera to vessels at Quebec were not successful, although the first cases were among emigrants; this was attributed not to infection, but solely to the crowded and filthy condition of the emigrant houses; for did not the pestilence break out in a low and uncleanly and ill-ventilated part of the city of Quebec, then crowded with a large population of emigrants of the lowest description. The sickness on board the Carrick and other cholera vessels was declared to have been mainly ship-fever and small-pox; and although there had been some cholera on board these vessels, yet there had been no cases for thirty

days previous to the arrival of some of them. In the first two weeks, (more correctly months) there had been 1,000 deaths, which excessively large number could only have come from a general distemperature of the air, which spared 1,000 where it attacked one. The conveyance by soiled clothing was overlooked.

In Montreal great stress was laid on the fact that on the same night of June 9th, when the Voyageur arrived, several native inhabitants sickened in various parts of the city remote from the docks and from each other, before having had communication with the port or landing place, and most if not all of these died in twenty-four hours; but we have already seen that cholera was landed April 28th, May 14th, May 28th, and June 3d. The Voyageur we now know was not the first steamboat laden with cholera which went from Grosse Island and Quebec to Montreal. Many diarrhoeal cases had been landed and had wandered all over Montreal, or many parts of it. In two weeks, or more likely two months, 800 persons died of it, and this so-called rapidity of generation and progress is erroneously said to have outstripped the emigrants and reached Detroit early in July. But we now know the very steamboats by which it was carried to Detroit.

Again, it is incorrectly stated that without having shown itself at any intermediate spot between Canada and New York it appeared in New York city in the person of a Mr. Fitzgerald, an Irish emigrant, who arrived in Quebec in the autumn of 1831, and lived in Albany from September to May, and on the 3d of May took a first floor of a house in Cherry street, near James street. He was a steady and temperate tailor, his wife was a neat housekeeper, and they committed no, imprudence in diet. On June 25th he spent the day in Brooklyn, sickened in the night, but soon recovered. Early on the 26th two of his children were attacked, and both died on the 27th. On the 28th, after eating strawberries and being exposed to the infection of her husband and children, who had not eaten strawberries, the wife was attacked and died.

Fitzgerald is the man who is said to have received a trunk of soiled clothing from Leeds, Canada, although some say it came from Leeds, England; he was a recent emigrant, and may have had close connections with Canada and even Ireland or England. It is certain that his diet and surroundings did not cause Asiatic cholera, which had already been quietly and secretly introduced into New York by the ship Henry IV. and others.

The second reported case in New York was also an Irishman named O'Neil, seized the same day in Greenwich, two miles away from the first cases. He died the next day in the Greenwich hospital. He had been drunk for a week and had fallen into the North River, perhaps where some cholera ship had docked. The next day, June 30th, a lodger of a Mr. Hannasy, No. 15 James slip, near the first cases, was seized and died July 1st. He was temperate and careful, but was not known to have had any communication with the first James street cases. Another lodger sickened and died the same day in the same house July 1st. The keeper, Mr. Hannasy, and several others were subsequently taken sick and died either there or at places to which they were removed. the latter were intemperate, and the house was most disgustingly filthy; but those causes alone could not produce Asiatic cholera; while the signs of infection were very manifest.

All

On July 2d, cases (how many?) occurred near the same locality, viz., in Water street, on the East river, near James street. By July 4th it had shown itself in various places upon the opposite or west side of the

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