An unknown and deadly disease from Asia reaches our country. The discussion soon breaks out about exactly how the disease spreads and how contagious it actually is. Due to the quarantine measures, people get into economic difficulties and they start to murmur. Corona? No, cholera!
The newspapers were full of horror stories about the Asian fallow run, as cholera was initially called. When the deadly disease reached Europe around 1830, alarm bells went off with the Dutch government. Medically they had no idea what this disease was and how to fight it, so the government resorted to an age-old cure for infectious diseases:quarantine and isolating the sick. The people on board and the cargo of ships from risk areas had to stay on board for two weeks to check that they were not infected.
Soon the Chamber of Commerce started lobbying for relaxation of the measures because of the economic damage to traders. Doubt set in on the government. Violent riots had already broken out abroad and she wanted to prevent that at all costs. In addition, the chance of famine and thus revolt was great, if grain ships were no longer allowed to enter the Netherlands. After a few months, she shortened the quarantine period to four days.
In the prime of your life
The quarantine measures did not stop the cholera. In 1832 the disease hit the Netherlands hard. In Leiden, for example, there were 485 fatalities within three months, out of a population of 35,128 inhabitants. And then the worst cholera epidemics were yet to come.
People had been used to infectious diseases such as smallpox for centuries. In an outbreak, especially small children were the victims and the infant mortality rate was therefore high. But cholera was different. The disease mainly affected people in the prime of their lives. And the course of the disease was often very rapid; you could be dead within hours of being infected. The spread of the disease also went like wildfire and no one understood how. All this together was extremely terrifying.
Doctors in discussion
After the outbreak of cholera in Europe, it would take another fifty years before the German physician Robert Koch discovered the cholera bacterium. Only then did it become clear how the disease spread, namely through the stools of patients. When it ends up in drinking water, the germs infect anyone who swallows the water. The cities had no water pipes and only the rich could buy clean drinking water. The rest used dirty canal water or groundwater via water pumps. The groundwater in the west of the Netherlands was often just below the surface, so that contaminated wastewater could easily end up in the groundwater. It is no coincidence that most of the casualties occurred here.
The cause and spread of this unknown disease remained a mystery for years. Doctors discussed this hotly and gave differing advice. The hygienists, for example, were doctors who dealt with public health and they were convinced that unhealthy air (miasma) made you sick. And the air in the slums and the smelly canals, which served as open sewers and garbage dumps, was unbearable. In order to prevent cholera, the living conditions of the poor and therefore the air had to be improved, they thought.
Although many scientists disagreed, the attending physicians on the scene noticed that several people from a single family regularly died, especially when they lived in small and stuffy slums. City doctor Francois Dozy noted in his patient descriptions that it was no wonder 'that those densely populated slums, which one finds in Leiden, which is otherwise not overcrowded, and in which the poorest kind of people live, have become foyers d'infection.'
English scientist John Snow also disagreed with the dirty air theory. He thought he saw the danger in the water. In 1854 he traced the spread of cholera in the London borough of Soho to a public water pump. Snow was right, but he still had no idea how the water could have become contagious. Later, an adjacent leaking cesspool turned out to have been the culprit. But until the discovery of the cholera bacteria, the discussion continued.
Quacks
How to treat this unknown disease? Doctors tried everything and often it did the patients more harm than good. Such as bloodletting and emetic in people who were already severely weakened and dehydrated. The less harmful mustard paste for rubbing the skin or taking warm baths was also in the recipe book. Furthermore, doctors also had good advice for the state of mind. Above all, you had to stay cheerful, since sadness and fear could cause diarrhoea.
If the doctors disagree and just do what, who are you to believe? There were plenty of quacks trying to make a living out of people's fear. They advertised vague drinks and they were in great demand. Dr. Bleeker's opium drink, for example, was well known. It reduced abdominal cramps but did not prevent the disease from spreading further. People would rather buy his drink than have to go to the hospital, because they certainly didn't trust that at all.
Conspiracy theories
Isolating the sick in separate hospitals, in addition to the economic quarantine, was an age-old remedy. So special cholera hospitals arose soon after the first outbreak. The patients who were eventually taken there were more dead than alive, and often did not survive. This was not good for the reputation of the cholera hospital and the doctors.
Outside the Netherlands, that reputation seems to have been much worse. Conspiracy theories quickly spread in many European countries. The poor were convinced that doctors or the government wanted to poison them with cholera. They took their sick relatives out of the cholera hospital, stormed government buildings and mistreated officials and doctors. In England, for example, as many as 72 violent riots broke out within fourteen months, with doctors confronted by thousands of angry people.
Politicians waiting
During the great cholera outbreak in 1849, which would make more victims than in 1832, the Dutch government took much less action than in 1832. The confusion surrounding the disease was too great:quarantine did not seem to help, and people were abroad. also reluctant. The government feared that measures would harm the economy. Also, cholera often broke out in several places at the same time. This raised the question of whether the disease was transmitted through contact at all.
In addition, fighting a disease by improving the living conditions of the poor was quite progressive. In the liberal Netherlands, this idea was not supported by the majority. Politicians saw this as interference in the private lives of citizens and who was going to pay for all those improvements? They would hesitate to act against unsanitary conditions until the sixties of the nineteenth century.
So what did the government do? Above all, wait and pray for the good outcome. There were measures, but mostly local. Several cities cancel markets and fairs. The fact that the people there could no longer indulge in immoral behavior was heartily applauded by the city councils.
Through pamphlets they also distributed advice and precautions that the people themselves could take. Tips such as avoiding apples and cucumbers were aimed at the more affluent citizens. The poor could not afford this at all and only ate potatoes.
Dung heap riot
The wait-and-see attitude of politicians in 1849 would cause many additional victims. With the growing knowledge about the disease and the connection with environmental pollution and hygiene, the realization also grew that they had to do something. They had to join forces to keep rich and poor healthy. Especially because the dirt from the slums reached the better neighborhoods via the water. With the increasing economic activity in many cities, things had become even dirtier. The urgency increased.
From 1850, each municipality had become responsible for its own public health. They started to take measures to improve hygiene and even lay water pipes and sewers here and there. In the last major cholera epidemic in 1866, medical advisers recommended cleaning the cholera-infected homes with chlorine smoke and burning the contaminated bedding. But people from the poor neighborhoods found the meddling humiliating and didn't want to lose their meager possessions. In Rotterdam, only 174 residents of the 1,300 houses to be cleaned gave permission. The rest refused to let the inspectors in.
The cholera measures mainly affected the poor and the self-employed, who were not always willing to cooperate. But violent riots, such as abroad, do not seem to have occurred in the Netherlands. One of the few revolts hit the municipality of Hilversum, where the mayor banned manure heaps at home. These would be sources of infection, according to the medical advisers. But for many people, small livestock and a small field that they fertilized themselves was a crucial addition to their food.
Featured by the editors
MedicineWhat are the microplastics doing in my sunscreen?!
AstronomySun, sea and science
BiologyExpedition to melting land
When the citizens realized that their dung heaps would be cleared, the anger set in. But it didn't get any further than some swearing and threats. A petition was quickly circulated against the clearing of the manure heaps, which was massively signed. The mayor chose eggs for his money and withdrew the decision.
Cholera defeated
After 1866, the cholera would still make some victims locally in the Netherlands, but the worst was over due to the improved hygiene. This is in contrast to several other countries in Europe, Russia and the United States. A major epidemic in 1892 took the lives of many thousands of Germans and Spaniards and Russia was also badly affected with a quarter of a million victims. Because it was clear in the meantime that living conditions had to be improved to stop the disease, but the governments in the affected countries had failed to do this, this cholera epidemic once again caused major riots.
It was especially hard in Russia. Doctors and civil servants were murdered, patients forcibly removed from hospitals and in Ukraine the insurgents even set fire to an entire city. Conspiracy theories about the elite who wanted to kill them using cholera were still alive.
How will we look back on corona later? Is the government now taking the right measures to prevent further epidemics? How much longer will doctors debate the right treatment for this new disease? And will the Netherlands this time also be protected from riots as a result of conspiracy theories? Time will tell.