Cholera Online, 1817 to 1923
Browse this collection
Over the course of the 19th century, several severe outbreaks of cholera ravaged nearly the entire world. This collection is composed of over 500 texts and 80 images that deal with the cholera pandemics of that period.
Cholera is an acute and painful diarrheal disease that can lead to severe dehydration and death within hours if left untreated. Infection primarily affects the digestive system and is spread by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Cholera is extremely contagious in communities without adequate, modern sanitation, as most of the world was in 1817 when the first pandemic emerged from India. News of its spread and impending approach often sent panic into entire nations, and health professionals were largely at a loss as to how to treat or prevent it until modern epidemiological and laboratory techniques were developed later in the century.
This collection builds upon the earlier project by the National Library of Medicine entitled Cholera Online: A Modern Pandemic in Texts and Images which was partly inspired by the 315-page "Bibliography of Cholera" compiled by John Shaw Billings in 1875 for John M. Woodworth's massive report, The Cholera Epidemic of 1873 in the United States. This extensive bibliography by Billings meant to include all published monographs and journal articles "which relate mainly or entirely to cholera." In reading through the bibliography, it appears to be a precursor, perhaps a "pilot project," to the great Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, which began coming out in 1880. While the items chosen for this project were not selected directly from Billings' bibliography, nearly all dating before 1874 appear there.
Billings did not mention images in his bibliography, but this project afforded the opportunity to show them separately from the texts. The cartoons and social satire regarding cholera are primarily from the Images from the History of Medicine (IHM) database, as are the photographs of physicians who contributed to the debate about cholera and images of urban outbreaks and hygiene.
The current (seventh) pandemic remains a challenge for public health officials. To read more about cholera and the threat it poses today, visit the website of the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/cholera/. Also, see the MedlinePlus online Medical Encyclopedia entry on cholera: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000303.htm.