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"Epidemic cholera"

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Times
(6 October 1857): 4, cols. C-D

PDF courtesy of Times Digital Archive, via Michigan State University Libraries.

After receiving reports of epidemic cholera in Hamburg and several Baltic ports, the Board of Health issued a circular, dated 29 September, to local boards of health. The board restated the precautions it considered most effective; they constitute a summation of the standard sanitarian code, updated to incorporate its Medical Council's post-epidemic analysis of water supply in South London in 1853-54. This example is used to argue that impure water, in general, aggravates the spread of cholera. There is also a brief mention of localized outbreaks traceable to "the use of well-water into which impurities had either been carelessly thrown, or had drained or leaked through the adjoining soil -- the Golden Square outbreak, among others, it may be assumed.


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