On the mode of communication of cholera — John Shaqi
On the mode of communication of choleraSnow, John
History
On the mode of communication of cholera
Snow, John
Cholera
The man from whose house the cow-heels were sent for sale died on
Monday, the 20th of August. It was the custom in the house to boil these
articles on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; and the cow-heels under
consideration were taken to Carisbrook, which is a mile from Newport,
ready boiled, on Tuesday the 21st. Eleven persons in all partook of this
food, seven of whom ate it without any additional cooking. Six of these
were taken ill within twenty-four hours after eating it, five of whom
died, and one recovered. The seventh individual, a child, who ate but a
small quantity of the cow-heels, was unaffected by it. Four persons
partook of the food after additional cooking. In one case the cow-heels
were fried, and the person who ate them was taken ill of cholera within
twenty-four hours afterwards, and died. Some of the food was made into
broth, of which three persons partook while it was warm; two of them
remained well, but the third person partook again of the broth next day,
when cold, and, within twenty-four hours after this latter meal, she was
taken ill with cholera, of which she died. It may be proper to mention,
although it is no unusual circumstance for animal food to be eaten in
hot weather when not quite fresh, that some of the persons perceived the
cow-heels to be not so fresh as they ought to have been at the time they
were eaten, and part of them had to be thrown away a day or two
afterwards, in consequence of being quite putrid.
It is not unlikely that some of the cases of cholera which spring up
without any apparent connection with previous cases, may be communicated
through articles of diet. It is the practice of the poor people, who
gain a living by selling fruit and other articles in the streets, to
keep their stock in the very crowded rooms in which they live, and, when
visiting the out-patients of a medical charity a few years ago, I often
saw baskets of fruit pushed under the beds of sick patients, in close
proximity with the chamber utensils. I need hardly say that if cases of
disease were propagated in this way, it would be quite impossible to
trace them.
If the cholera had no other means of communication than those which we
have been considering, it would be constrained to confine itself chiefly
to the crowded dwellings of the poor, and would be continually liable to
die out accidentally in a place, for want of the opportunity to reach
fresh victims; but there is often a way open for it to extend itself
more widely, and to reach the well-to-do classes of the community; I
allude to the mixture of the cholera evacuations with the water used for
drinking and culinary purposes, either by permeating the ground, and
getting into wells, or by running along channels and sewers into the
rivers from which entire towns are sometimes supplied with water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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