Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1885 — CHOLERA’S TRAVELS. [ARTICLE]

CHOLERA’S TRAVELS.

Courses the Plague Has Pursued in tile Pant. [From the Inter Ocean.] In 1832 cholera prevailed in France to such an extent that 120,000 deaths occurred within the year, 7,000 of which were iD the short space of eighteen days. In the spring of the next year it appeared in England and m Ireland. From Liverpool, Cork, Limerick, and Dublin five vessels of emigrants sailed for Quebec, and 179 deaths occurred during the passage. These ships were put in quarantine at Grosse Isle, but on June 7 a vessel conveyed a load of these emigrants, with their baggage, to Quebec and Montreal. Cases of cholera occurred at Quebec the next day. From Montreal the emigrants were forwarded by the emigrant society as fast as they arrived, and the pestilence was sown at each stopping Mace. The epidemic in that way reached Detroit, continued west along the great lakes, and in September the military posts on the Upper Mississippi were attacked, and the most fatal effects were displayed when the disease reached Fort Dearborn. The infection was both direct ami indirect between the sick and the well. An infected mattress flung from a passing vessel was picked up by a man, and both he and his wife died of cholera. In October, 1832, the brig Amiael, with 108 persons on board, sailed from New York for New Orleans. The disease appeared on board the sixth day out. The brig was stranded on Folly Island, ten miles from Charleston, and in two days the disease began spreading among the inhabitants of that island. Before that there had never been a case of cholera within two hundred miles of Folly Island. An emigrant ship having cholera on board reached New York, whence the disease spread up the Hudson, and was carried southwardly to Philadelphia, and thence to the .West. In 1833 the disease broke out in Havana, whence it was carried to Mexican and American towns on the Gulf of Mexico, and up the Mississippi and Ohio as far as the western border of Pennsylvania. The next year there was a second outbreak at Quebec, occasioned by a vessel of emigrants coming in. The disease prevailed in Canada and New York, and thence spread all over the country in 1835-36. Then there was a gradual subsidence and the disease disappeared for nearly ten years. In 1845, however, it entered upon its old path, and reached England in October, beginning with Sunderland, the very town it first visited in 1831. Two vessels sailed from Havre, one for New York, the other for New Orleans, both carrying German emigrants. The New York boat occasioned an. epidemic in tlie quarantine grounds. There was no quarantine at New Orleans, the sick of the vessels were conveyed to hospitals, and a severe epidemic ensued. A boat from New Orleans to Memphis carried the disease to the latter point, and the next spring it spread thence to St. Louis, Cincinnati, and the whole Mississippi Valley. In October it reached Sacramento by means of overland emigrants, and San Francisco by steamer. In 1849 the disease reappeared in New York, and 5,000 persons died. The disease rested until 1853, when it broke out in Teheran, Persia, destroving 11)000 persons, and reached France, where 114,000 died, and England, where there were 16,000 deaths. In 1b54 emigrants introduced it into New York, whence it was carried to Philadelphia, extended to many towns in New England, and was borne along the western channels of emigration. There was a rest until 1864. when the cholera broke out among the pilgrims to Mecca. It reached Europe in 1865, and was thence borne by the usual means to Nortn America and the West Indies. In 1866 it was carried from Halifax in troop ships to New York and the various Southern ports, from whence its progress could be traced to Texas and the Gulf States, and to the towns of the Mississippi and Missouri. The last appearance of cholera in the United States was in 1873, when it occurred at three points far distant from each other, being introduced in the effects of emigrants. These were Carthage, Ohio; Crow Biver, Minn., and Yankton, Dakota. In each place twentyfour hours after the poison particles were liberated the disease appeared. It is thus shown that cholera is not general in this country from any local conditions, but depends upon the introduction of the specific poison of the disease. Water is the main channel through which the infections principles of the disease are spread, but the particles can also be conveyed in clothing, proving fatal when liberated.