When was cholera common in britain

The authorities were poorly prepared for the invasion of a new epidemic and the doctors disagreed bitterly on the measures to be taken. There was little co-operation between the authorities, and the fact that the urban poor mistrusted the medical profession did not improve the situation. All this resulted in several cholera riots. Cholera first appeared in Britain in , on board a boat from India. Like the Black Death, it came by sea and caused a similar fear in people.

Cholera is a bacterial infection caused by contaminated food or water. It caused vomiting and diarrhoea, and could result in death within a matter of hours. That is what made it so frightening. No-one knew what caused it. Various causes were suggested, eg poisonous air, drunkenness and moral laxity.

In miasma theory, it was believed that diseases were caused by the presence in the air of a miasma, a poisonous vapour in which were suspended particles of decaying matter that was characterised by its foul smell.

The theory originated in the Middle Ages and endured for several centuries. The advocates of contagion theories believed that an infective agent was spread from person to person, which would explain why those who cared for the sick often fell sick themselves.

Measures to prevent and control the spread of infectious diseases were based on these two theories. Sanitation and good hygiene practices such as washing walls and floors, removing the foul-smelling sources of miasmas—decaying waste and sewage—were miasmatic measures.

Contagionist measures were those such as quarantine and restriction of movement, preventing direct contact with potentially infected people. In practice, both types of measures were used. During the Black Death , infected houses were quarantined and strangers banned from entering towns, but at the same time, fires were used to destroy infected materials and people wore masks and nosegays to purify the air they breathed.

At the end of the s, germ theory was able to account for both infection through contaminants in air and water and person-to-person contact but it still left unanswered questions—such as why, when two people were exposed to the same source of infection, only one might get the disease and the other appeared untouched.

In s England, the miasma theory made sense to the sanitary reformers. Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation had created many poor, filthy and foul-smelling city neighbourhoods that tended to be the focal points of disease and epidemics.

By improving the housing, sanitation and general cleanliness of these existing areas, levels of disease were seen to fall, and to provide evidence that apparently supported the miasma theory. In —49 there was a second outbreak of cholera, and this was followed by a further outbreak in — Towards the end of the second outbreak, John Snow , a London-based physician, published a paper, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera , in which he proposed that cholera was not transmitted by bad air but by a water-borne infection.

However, little attention was paid to the paper. Following the third cholera outbreak in , Snow published an update to his theory, with statistical evidence that he had collected from an area of London around Broad Street, Soho. By recording the location of deaths related to cholera in the area, Snow was able to show that the majority were clustered around one particular public water pump in Broad Street. He eventually convinced local officials to remove the handle of the pump, although by that time the worst of the epidemic had actually passed.

The death of her husband was a great shock to Queen Victoria. How could one of the most important people in Britain die from a disease like this? Was this common? Were rich and poor just as likely to die from diseases like this at the time of the Great Exhibition? Cholera had arrived in Britain for the first time in , probably arriving on ships bringing imports from China.

Doctors had little idea about the causes of cholera.