Abstract
THE early history of cholera is involved in a good deal of obscurity, and it was not until 1817, when the disease caused a terrible mortality amongst our troops in India, and subsequently spread into different parts of the Asiatic continent, that any noteworthy attention was given to it by European observers. It is very possible that even previous to the present century cholera had made its way into Europe, but the first trustworthy record of its course westwards was in 1831, when it travelled by way of Russia and the Baltic, and, as far as we know, made its appearance for the first time in England. In the following year it became widely prevalent in this country. In the years 1848–49, and again in 1853–54, cholera travelled to Europe and England from the East, taking much the same route as it did in 1831–32. The last outbreak from which we have suffered was in 1865–66, the disease being imported into Southampton in 1865, and reappearing both in the metropolis and in several other parts of the United Kingdom in the following year. But on this occasion the infection for the first time reached us through Egypt, having travelled there in the track of the Mohammedan pilgrims, who were on their return from Mecca, and being then distributed along the lines of steamboat traffic which, starting from Alexandria as a centre, radiate towards ports in the Mediterranean and on our own shores. In 1866 the disease became epidemic in the metropolis, and its special incidence in the East End was shown to be in the main due to the polluted character of the water delivered to that part of London.
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Cholera Prospects . Nature 28, 265–266 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/028265a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/028265a0