Second cholera pandemic (1829–51)

The second cholera pandemic (1829–1849), also known as the Asiatic Cholera Pandemic, was a cholera pandemic that reached from India across western Asia to Europe, Great Britain and the Americas, as well as east to China and Japan. Cholera caused more deaths, more quickly, than any other epidemic disease in the 19th century. It is exclusively a human disease, and it can spread through many means of travel, such as by persons via caravan, ship, and aeroplanes. Cholera is known most popularly to spread through warm fecal-contaminated river waters and contaminated foods. The causative microorganisms (Cholera vibrio) flourish by reaching humans. It is treatable with oral re-hydration therapy and preventable with adequate sanitation and water treatment.

Historians believe that the first pandemic had lingered in Indonesia and the Philippines in 1830.

Although not much is known about the journey of the cholera pandemic in east India, many believe that this pandemic began, like the first, with outbreaks along the Ganges River delta in India. From there the disease spread along trade routes to cover most of India. By 1828 the disease had traveled to China. Cholera was also reported in China in 1826 and 1835, and in Japan in 1831. In 1829, Iran was apparently infected with cholera from Afghanistan. It spread during the Moscow invasion in August 1830. By 1831 the epidemic had infiltrated Russia’s main cities and towns. Russian soldiers brought the disease to Poland in February 1831. There were a reported 250,000 cases of cholera in Russia and 100,000 deaths.

Cholera reached the southern tips of the Ural Mountains in 1829. On 26 August 1829 the first cholera case was recorded in Orenburg with reports of outbreaks in Bugulma (7 November), Buguruslan (5 December), Menselinsk (2 January 1830) and Belebeevsk (6 January). With 3500 cases including 865 fatal ones in Orenburg province, the epidemic stopped by February 1830. It swept across Europe for the first time during the second pandemic and reached as far west as the Caspian Sea.

By the spring of 1831, frequent reports of the spread of the pandemic in Russia prompted the British government to issue quarantine orders for ships sailing from Russia to British ports. By late summer, with the disease appearing more likely to spread to Britain, its Board of Health, in accordance with the prevailing miasma theory, issued orders recommending as a preventive the burning of "decayed articles, such as rags, cordage, papers, old clothes, hangings...filth of every description removed, clothing and furniture should be submitted to copious effusions of water, and boiled in a strong ley; drains and privies thoroughly cleansed by streams of water and chloride of lime...free and continued admission of fresh air to all parts of the house and furniture should be enjoined for at least a week."

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