Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
sanitation measures. Though no American city grew as rapidly as London,
English sanitary reform attracted a receptive audience in the United States.The
sanitary idea was persuasive because it became easier to compare urban problems
after 1830 than it had been in a previous era of limited urban growth.
Charles E. Rosenberg, in his classic study
The Cholera Years,
acknowl-
edged the transformation in American thinking about disease that occurred
in the nineteenth century. Focusing on New York's cholera epidemics of
1832, 1849, and 1866, he observed:“Cholera in 1866 was a social problem;
in 1832, it had still been, to many Americans, a primarily moral dilemma.
Disease had become a consequence of man's interaction with his environ-
ment; it was no longer an incident in a drama of moral choice and spiritual
salvation.”
3
The change in mindset was gradual and not entirely conscious,
but the days of viewing disease as God's wrath were passing.
Throughout much of the nineteenth century, however, it remained sim-
plest to blame the poor, the infirm, or members of non-white races for the
scourge of epidemic disease. Rosenberg further noted that “when in the
spring of 1832 Americans awaited cholera, they reassured themselves that
this new pestilence attacked only the filthy, the hungry, the ignorant.”
4
Newly arriving immigrants raised the greatest fears, especially when they
were crammed into grimy and dilapidated housing. Ironically, cholera—
“the poor man's plague”—made victims of the very people accused of
breeding the disease. In New York, blacks and Irish immigrants were the
most frequent casualties. Persons born in Ireland accounted for more than
40 percent of the deaths in New York. In Philadelphia, the case rate was
nearly twice as great among blacks as among whites.
5
In southern cities, cholera also was considered a class disease, and most
especially a race disease. As Howard N. Rabinowitz noted, “although poor
whites could be found near industrial and other unpleasant sites, the alleys
and rear dwellings of the cities were almost entirely the province of the
blacks.” These were areas where cholera lurked, and poor housing often
meant high mortality rates. In Richmond, Nashville, Atlanta, and other
southern cities, cholera appeared first in black neighborhoods.
6
Local gov-
ernments in Charleston and other southern cities emphasized social cohe-
sion as a major objective. Thus, poor health conditions threatened all
citizens, and public and private funds were intermingled in an attempt to
develop an effective health-care system. Some historians have even argued
that health and disease-control facilities were generally more advanced in
southern cities. Disease was “a constant companion” there, since freezing
