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NOTES ON THE CHOLERA SEASONS OF 1832 AND 1834.

BY REV. C. DADE, M.A.

The following paper contains the results of personal observations taken during the Cholera Seasons of 1832 and 1834, in the City of Toronto. The subject does not involve medical considerations, but is considered as bearing upon the connection between atmospheric conditions and æsthetic phenomena. During the period above alluded to I kept a careful record of the weather and its prevailing features, the observations being mainly thermometric.

The year 1832 must ever be considered as a most memorable one in the annals of Canada, and it was fraught with lamentation, and mourning, and woe. We were visited with domestic discord and foreign invasion. In both, blood was freely poured forth; but what comparison is there between the victims of the sword and of that fell destroyer, which spared neither age nor sex, and against whose desolating attacks vain was the help of man. The appearance of the cholera on the American continent was an event which inspired not only universal dread but almost universal curiosity. We had traced it in its course from east to west, resembling in this all other pestilences of modern and ancient times, and there seemed but little doubt that in its onward career it would reach the shores of the far western world. There seemed to be a fairer opportunity of determining the nature and origin of the disease than at any previous period, and thus with varied feelings of awe and expectation men awaited the arrival of the terrible visitant. Rumours and surmises were soon converted into certainty, for on June 8th, 1832, the first case of cholera occurred in Quebec. To use the expressive language of the poet,

"Like a thunder peal,

One morn a rumour turned the city pale.
And staring on each other, fearful men

Uttered with faltering voice, one word-the Plague !"

The first subjects were emigrants, and were exposed to no other source of infection than the filthy state of their lodgings in that focus of abominations, the Lower Town of Quebec, stated by the board of Health to be a "low, dirty, ill-ventilated part of the City, crowded with emigrants of the lowest description." The pestilence having thus VOL. VII.

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got foothold, spread rapidly, and reached York, the capital of Upper Canada, June 19th. This place at the time might be considered as a spot peculiarly set apart for the abode of the destroyer. All the deadly elements which engender and foster disease and death were then in active operation. The Quarterly Reviewer of the day pronounced the "three stinking cities of Europe to have been, Lisbon, Edinburgh and Geneva," and if those of the New World had been classed in the same unsavoury category, "Little York,” as it was then called, would no doubt have occupied a prominent place. The genius of filth, if such there be, reigned predominant both in public and private. Crowded and loathsome hovels, cellars with putrid and stagnant water, dunghills with animal and vegetable garbage reeking in the scorching rays of the summer's sun, these deadly agents everywhere spread their contaminating influence. The curse of strong drink aggravated the horrors of the devouring pestilence, and the filthy and intemperate were its most numerous and earliest victims ; but having once taken hold, it gradually seized upon individuals of all classes, till at length neither age, constitution, habit, or condition, seemed to furnish any exemption. The popular opinion which prevailed of its being contagious not a little contributed to the general consternation. It would be foreign* to our purpose to enter into this controversy, which has many great names on both sides, for who shall decide when doctors disagree. One thing however was certain, that while contagionists and non-contagionists were battling the question, the disease, whether infectious, contagious, or a compound of both or neither, spread with unabated violence, and well nigh baffled all the skill of man. It will not be out of the way to mention an apparent exception. The 79th Highlanders were then quartered in the garrison, and their surgeon, Dr. Short, had been so successful in the

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An able communication, signed Q. H. Y., was addressed to the Quebec Mercury, which seems to have been the production of Dr. Henry, author of that amusing book, "Recollections of a Staff Surgeon." The Dr.'s experience of the disease, as it occurred in the East Indies. was extensive. He says, The great secret in treating the disease is to get at it in time. I was for nine months in charge of 1500 men, natives, in 1819. My mode of management was this. Each Serang (head of a gang) was provided with a bottle of brandy and laudanum, mixed in the proper proportions, and a measure exactly a dose for an adult; his instructions were to give the patient a dose and run with all speed for me; if he came in time I gave him a rupee, if he neglected his duty he was treated to a sound whacking with a bamboo, and thus with two strong motives, the hope of reward and the fear of punishment, I was speedily apprised of the danger, and thus, though many were attacked, I did not lose a single patient." Again," Is cholera contagious? The Quarterly Review says it is, I say it is not;" and he proceeds to give a number of "unquestionable facts" in proof of his assertion.

preventive measures adopted, that in August the Board of Health published the following statement: "To satisfy the most sceptical on this subject they consider the importance of it will fully excuse them for subjoining the information so kindly permitted by Dr. Short, Surgeon of the 79th Regiment, to disclose for our guidance the course pursued in the York garrison, and which has been attended with such happy results, not one case of cholera having therein occurred." Here follows a detailed account from the Dr. of the method adopted, which it is unnecessary to insert here, and though the precautions, &c., used under a military régime, could not be of universal application, yet they plainly prove how efficacious secondary agents may be in alleviating the direst visitations. Meanwhile the Town of York presented a most melancholy spectacle. Business was well nigh suspended, the prevailing panic keeping away all visitors from the country; and one might almost say, that the stillness of death reigned in its deserted streets, traversed continually by the cholera carts conveying the dead to the grave and the dying to the hospital.

It was impossible at the time, and still more so now, to find anything like an accurate estimate of the number of cholera victims, and the relative proportion of the cured and the dead. The reports of the Board of Health published at the time, cannot be considered more than an approximation. It was then a subject of complaint that several medical practitioners furnished either imperfect details or none at all. Numbers were buried by their friends without any record being kept, and many were the victims of quackery and out of the pale of medical practice, so that the only accessible reports were necessarily extremely defective, falling probably nearly half below the truth as regards the number of cases, and much more as to the number of deaths. The Board sat daily from 3 to 5 p. m., and left nothing undone within their power which could either arrest the progress of the pestilence or mitigate its rigour. The following are specimens of their reports:

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Total number of cases reported since the commencement, 239; deaths, 105. No report from four medical practitioners.

In Montreal, where the ravages of the pestilence were more terrific according to its population than in any other part of the globe, the number of cases, in August, was 284, and burials 149.

Total number of cases each week during the cholera months of June, July, and August :

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From this it is evident that the statistics of the cholera of 1832 in York are more a subject of conjecture than otherwise. It was said at the time, and it was not going beyond the mark, that the population of the town, then consisting of about 6000 persons, was at least decimated. In the City of Montreal alone the interments from June 10th to Sept. 1st were 2820, and according to the estimate of the Chief Agent at Quebec, no less than 2350 of the emigrants of 1832 fell victims to the disease. The emigration of that year was unprecedently great :

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1831,.. 1832,.

15,945

28,000

50,254

51,746

The crowded state of steamboats and other vessels, the peculiarly exposed state of the poorer emigrants to the varying temperature, scorching sun, and chilling rain, together with the debilitating effects in many cases of a long sea voyage, all these causes told with fatal effect, and aggravated the malignity of the appalling malady.

We now proceed to enquire whether there were any peculiar features in the seasons of these two years of plague, viz.: 1832 and 1834, calculated to increase or diminish its virulence. It has been said that cholera is more independent of climatic influences than any other disease whatever. The ravages of the yellow fever, for instance, are confined to a particular region, and if the traveller escapes infection and reaches a certain height he is safe. Thus it has never visited the City of Mexico, though the coast and neighborhood is its chosen abode, but the cholera devastated both alike. Still no one can deny that the effects of this as well as all other diseases must be modified by the varying circumstances of climate and locality. The latter was abundantly proved by undoubted facts, and the former is equally certain. All those deadly agents which, if they do not actually engender, foster disease, are mitigated or heightened by any deviation from the normal state and character of the season. The filthy elements in which Little York, in common with Montreal and Quebec, abounded, were made more active agents of disease and death by scorching suns, heavy rains, great evaporation, and sudden and violent fluctuations of temperature. Therefore the various atmospheric phenomena which precede and accompany the visitation of a pestilence are surely deserving of notice. Coming events cast their shadows before," both

in the natural as well as the moral world, and he must be a shallow observer who fails to note their indications.

In the bygone ages of ignorance and superstition any terrible visitations were supposed to be heralded by supernatural appearances in the heavens above and in the earth beneath. Such ideas are now exploded, "They live no longer in the light of reason." But though the pestilence walketh in darkness it gives sufficient tokens of its approach, and without entering more fully into this part of the subject it has been said, that whenever it has arrived deviations from the usual conditions of the season in temperature and other features marked its advent and progress. To enquire whether this was the case in Canada is the object of the following remarks, founded upon indisputable facts of which the infant science of meteorology stands so much in need, and the collection of which therefore, humble as the task may be, is surely advisable.

We will commence with December, 1831, a most remarkable month, and as I can testify from personal observation, unequalled for thirtytwo years at least. The mean temperature of this month at 8 a. m.,

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