and the
1849
Cholera Epidemic
Missouri Republican, December 21, 1848
Cholera had first made its existence known in Saint Louis during an 1832-1833 epidemic that had spread across America from Europe. The disease quickly ran its course, killing only a few hundred people in this bustling western metropolis. Subsequent visitations seemed to be not much more virulent, killing a small portion of the population, mostly children, the elderly, and the infirm.
By the year 1849 Saint Louis had become a boomtown. Easterners were traveling west, to the gold fields of California. Huge numbers of German immigrants, mostly refugees of the recent revolution in that country, poured into an already cramped city. With these Germans came an invisible visitor, a visitor which would prove to be more unwelcome in this new land than even the Germans themselves. Very little was known of the true cause of the disease, and even less was known about how to treat or prevent it. Ultimately, cholera will lead to the creation of the first practical sewer and drainage system in Saint Louis. By the end of summer, 1849, cholera will claim approximately thirteen percent of the city’s population.
Near the end of December 1848, the steamer Alton pulled into Saint Louis after making the long journey upriver from New Orleans. Five children and one woman had died during the voyage. Although the ship’s officers attributed the deaths to dysentery, it is most likely that they succumbed to cholera. As the rest of the crew and passengers disembarked and made their way to the homes of family and friends, it can only be assumed that the germs of cholera went with them.
The disease seemed to “lay low” in the city until early May. The weekly mortality report of May 2 showed 41 deaths attributed to cholera, equal to approximately one-third of the deaths recorded during the previous week. By May 13, 181 of 273 recorded deaths were attributed to cholera. As the number of emigrants to the city rose, so rose the death rate from cholera. Irish and Germans coming into Saint Louis were not required to undergo any sort of medical examination.
The city council finally stumbled into action, appropriating $10,000.00 for the Board of Health to hire scavengers to clean the streets and alleys and dispose of accumulated waste. Unfortunately, the dumping ground chosen for most of this waste was Chouteau’s Pond. The pond, located just south of present-day downtown Saint Louis, was once an idyllic setting for picnics and family outings. Over the years warehouses, factories, stockyards and slums had cropped up along its banks, turning the once pristine lake into an open sewer. The lake drained into Mill Creek, which drained into the Mississippi River just north of the city’s main water pumping station at the foot of Bates Street.
The situation had grown serious enough that, in early July, a quarantine station was established just south of the city on Arsenal Island. Boats coming upriver were stopped at the island and all passengers were examined. Anyone found to be exhibiting the symptoms of cholera was detained at this place until they either recovered or died.
While on the island these patients, just like their counterparts in the city, underwent a variety of treatments to cure the dreaded disease. Bonfires of coal, tar, and sulfur were burned in an effort to purify the air, which was believed to be the carrier of the contagion. Remedies included drugs like laudanum (containing large amounts of opium) and blue mass (containing a quantity of mercury), along with practices such as bleeding and cupping. Doctor William Beaumont‘s preferred treatment was as follows: “Forty to sixty drops of a mixture of ammoniated tincture of valerian, opium, camphor, sulphuric ether, and peppermint, with hot friction to the stomach and the extremities.” If this did not work within a few hours, he would administer calomel, then cup the patient on the chest, abdomen, and spinal column. If this still led to no improvement, he would bleed the patient. Doctor William McPheeters used many of the same “cures,” adding to them hot bricks and occasional injections of lead acetate.
With the hottest part of the summer came the highest death rate. Beginning near the end of June cholera was killing at the rate of one hundred people a day. With the rising temperatures and the rising death rate came increased pressure on city officials to do something to alleviate the death and suffering. On June 24 there was a public meeting at the courthouse. Those in attendance demanded the resignation of the entire city government of they could not carry out their responsibilities. The city responded by appointing a twelve man committee to oversee efforts to end the epidemic.
The efforts of the committee, for the most part, were fairly useless. Along with the burning of coal, tar, and sulfur, the committeemen also ordered the cessation of the tolling of church bells for each funeral, and fresh produce was banned from the city (on the theory that it was a cause of cholera). Steamers were prohibited from docking at the levee, leading to shipboard riots in a few cases. Saloons were closed on Sunday, as some believed that the epidemic was a punishment from God. Omnibuses did not run through the slums. During the week ending July 16, seven hundred people died from cholera.
And then it ended. On July 28 the committee announced that cholera was no longer epidemic in the city; on July 31 the committee disbanded. Registered deaths attributed to cholera totaled just over 8,400, or approximately thirteen percent of the city’s population. Many deaths probably went unrecorded. People still searched for a cause, or a reason, for the epidemic. Some blamed the Missouri Republican, as the paper had begun publishing a Sunday issue on September 3, 1848. Some even blamed sauerkraut.
Others in the city seemed to know better, albeit for the wrong reasons, and they took action immediately to see that such an epidemic would never again strike their beloved city. Learned men still believed that cholera was a product of miasma, or bad air. They reasoned that rotting animal and vegetable matter, combined with decaying human waste in cesspools and in the streets (Saint Louisans were well-known for emptying their chamber pots into the street), created gasses which rose up and infected the masses. They could see only two major actions that needed to take place. Although both projects happened, and were successful in stopping further epidemics, they worked for reasons other than those the city fathers believed.
On July 30, 1849 the city authorized construction of a sewer line to drain Kayser’s Lake on the city’s north side. Early in April 1850 the project was begun with the construction of a twenty-foot by twelve-foot underground trunk line. The city then turned its collective eye to Chouteau’s Pond.
Much of the blame for the cholera epidemic can be placed on the condition of the pond, described in 1850 as receiving the “washings of contiguous streets...the offal of slaughter pens...the dead carcasses of dogs and horses...[to] infect the atmosphere.” Three additional sewer projects were approved by the city, with the sole purpose of one line being to drain Chouteau’s Pond. By 1853 the pond was drained, the projects were completed, and the annual visit of cholera to St. Louis continued to be less and less virulent.
Thirty-five years would elapse between the time of the worst cholera epidemic in Saint Louis’ history and the isolation of the bacillus that causes the disease in 1884 by Doctor Robert Koch. Cholera was once again running rampant in Europe. Many Saint Louisans still had vivid memories of the 1849 epidemic, and they had no desire to see it return. On March 6, 1885 approximately 1,000 residents attended a lecture on public health at the Pickwick Theater, where they were shown pictures of sidewalk hydrants located near sewers and wells sandwiched in between rows of outhouses. Fractured limestone rock under the city allowed the seepage of sewage into water supplies. Faced with this situation, local residents were asked if they thought “St. Louis prepared for a visitation of the cholera?...[with] 25,000 to 30,000 privy vaults, saturating the soil with corruption and making sewers of the wells...how is it possible to believe that the city is prepared to face an epidemic?” On March 24 the city council passed a well-closing law. Never again was cholera a major fact of life in Saint Louis.
Until Koch’s discovery, the “bad air” theory for the spread of cholera still prevailed. Saint Louis’ efforts at establishing a city sewer system and a healthy supply of drinking water unknowingly paid off for the residents of the city. A new main water pumping system was established at Chain of Rocks in 1865, upriver from the city and the raw sewage that flowed into the Mississippi River from its homes and factories. It was not until Koch’s discovery that major metropolitan areas such as Saint Louis could rid themselves of this deadly scourge.
