Did cholera ever come to SLO County? Deadly disease once swept California
Health emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic have long brought out random speculation and even racist responses.
But microbiology does not recognize borders, race or politics.
Cholera is an efficient killer. A healthy person in the morning could be dead by the end of the day.
Vincent Geiger wrote the diary recording the covered wagon trek of his company of California gold seekers in 1849.
“Today we saw a grave in which three emigrants are buried who died with cholera in 10 hours after they were taken,” he wrote on Saturday, May 19, 1849. “Every day we have passed fresh made graves containing the remains of poor emigrants who have died with cholera on the way to the golden land.”
Scientists have since discovered the most common cause of cholera is bacteria-contaminated food or water. The disease can quickly reach epidemic proportions in places where sewer and water treatment are inadequate.
The earliest editions of the Tribune carried stories of outbreaks in other cities and advertised quack patent medicines.
In December 1870, the painkiller offered by Perry Davis & Son mixed racism with a claim for cures of wildly different maladies.
“Asiatic cholera, liver complaints, burns, bruises, frosted feet, pain in the face” were among the complaints that the company claimed its medicine could cure.
The all-vegetable elixir carried the 100% natural ingredients of opiates and ethyl alcohol.
Cholera is not unique to Asia.
A story that ran in The Tribune on Nov. 9, 1872, showed that health officers already had some idea about the link between contaminated water and cholera.
The newspaper reported about about a historic outbreak in London, England in the late 1810s, when 500 people were killed in one week by a contaminated well.
New York later had a similar problem.
“There is a farmers’ pump in the twelfth ward of Brooklyn, from which over fifty families obtained their water supply,” The Tribune reported. “In 1866 cholera broke out in five or six of those families, but the spread of the disease was prevented by the prompt action of the health officer, who removed the pump-handle.”
San Luis Obispo was lucky that it did not have a large cholera outbreak.
For many years, San Luis Obispo Creek was treated as an open sewer.
The stench was awful. In May 15, 1875, Tribune editor O.F. Thornton wrote that the creek would “fester and putrify in the scorching summer sun, and breed death-dealing miasmas.”
Thornton’s on-the-cheap suggestion was to build a dam with a flapper gate to flush the creek like a toilet every morning. It was not built and for a decade the creek continued to stink.
By Jan 18, 1884, the city of San Luis Obispo was in the process of building a conventional sewer to collect and treat waste. The frugal town allocated $5,942.10 to build it.
Businesses and homes then applied to be connected.
Even as late as 1966, a California Fish and Wildlife inspection revealed there were still some pipes dumping raw sewage into the creek and it was still treated as a public garbage dump.
Today, social distancing, shutdowns and a countywide order for residents to shelter at home are the modern-day equivalent of removing the pump handle from a contaminated well — although coronavirus and cholera are very different and require different responses.
These measures are an effort to tap the brakes on the spread of COVID-19.
This will help keep the disease from expanding faster than our health care system can handle it.
As a society, we have faced significant health challenges before. And with accurate information, we can adapt and prevail.
Here at The Tribune, we will do our best to keep you updated with the latest information about the coronavirus as it unfolds. The paywall has been removed for critical health stories so they can be read by everyone.
Stay healthy and be kind to each other.
