ABSTRACT
Asiatic cholera, or cholera morbus, spread to Britain from India in a series of epidemics which engulfed much of Europe in the 1820s. The symptoms and the rapacity with which the disease struck must have been alarming even to a population used to the sight of typhus, scarlet fever and smallpox. The Central Board of Health issued a vivid description of the symptomatology:
The attack of the disease in extreme cases is so sudden, that, from a state of apparent good health…an individual sustains as rapid a loss of bodily power as if he were suddenly struck down or poisoned; the countenance assuming a death-like appearance, the skin becoming cold…. The pulse is either feeble, intermitting, fluttering or lost; a livid circle is observed round the eyelids…. Vomiting soon succeeds; first some of the usual contents of the stomach, next a turbid fluid like whey…or water gruel…. Spasms, beginning at the toes and fingers soon follow…. The next severe symptoms are, an intolerable sense of weight, and constriction felt upon the chest …a leaden or bluish appearance of the countenance…the palms of the hands and soles becoming shrivelled…. At length a calm succeeds and death…. The powers of the constitution often yield to such an attack at the end of four hours, and seldom sustain longer than eight.1
