ABSTRACT
The last of the trinity of dangerous infectious diseases, cholera, is the subject of this chapter. As a sickness of environmental sanitation, the control of cholera was instrumental in transforming Singapore over the long haul from an unclean coolie town to an orderly nation-state. At the same time, the history of cholera reveals ethnic and class cleavages: between those who had access to potable water and modern public utilities and others who did not. There was also a parallel divide between the colonial regime and the Asian coolie class, such as rickshaw pullers, whose socio-economic predicaments in the face of cholera the British failed to comprehend. In the post-colonial years, the control of cholera contributed to the making of a garden city, a socially aware citizenry and the close surveillance of hawkers.
