9. The First Cholera Pandemic, 1817-1824
Cholera is a bacterial infection of the small intestine, most frequently spread through contaminated water or food. Of the animal kingdom, only humans are infected by the disease. It spreads quickly, transmitted by contact with feces from those carrying the disease. Thus, hygiene, or more accurately the lack thereof, is a critical component in its spread. In late 1816 or early 1817 cholera broke out along the Ganges River in India. Local residents and British troops carried it across the subcontinent. Cholera was nothing new to India, but the strain which emerged in 1817 was particularly virulent. By the end of the decade, it had spread into central Asia and China. Ships of the East Indies Companies of England and the Dutch carried it to the islands of the South Pacific.
By 1822 the disease spread into the Caucasus, across Northern Africa, through the Mid-East, and along the Mediterranean coast of Europe. It appeared in Japan, Indonesia, and Polynesia. In Java, the Dutch port at Semarang suffered over 1,200 dead in less than two weeks. Estimates of worldwide death tolls from the pandemic differ wildly. Several hundred thousand died on the Indian subcontinent alone. Java reported over 100,000 dead. The numbers of dead in China and across central Asia are anybody’s guess. As its name implies, the Cholera Pandemic which ended in 1824 (due to abnormally cold temperatures) was the first of several which occurred in the 19th and 20th century, each bearing horrors of their own.