While reading these chapters, I was more interested in why it took so long to find a real cure for cholera than I was in the process of determining the cause of its spread. Yes, as a Pre-Med student, I was intrigued by how the disease gave seemingly contradictory facts about how it is contracted. How can an entire area be affected save a few random houses? However, I was wondering why no one thought of giving water to someone who is clearly dehydrated. Was it because there was cholera in the water supply, therefore it didn’t help? Or was it because people believed that if there was “bad blood” it should be removed, and the same idea translated into “removing diarrhea”? How did the “Waterstones” daughter recover from cholera when the rest of her family did not?
Shaping the Future of New York City
Professor Braine, Spring 2013: Thursday 12:50-3:30pm in 4305 Boylan Hall (B)
As I have stated in my post, I found the fact that people who were clearly dehydrated were not given water was thoroughly perplexing. However, we have to consider the fact that during the 1840s, many of the practices of medicine was still in its infancy. Furthermore, there were varying levels of physicians, and all of them were allowed to prescribe medicine. This lack of uniformity in medical education resulted in the publication of various, contradictory solutions which inevitably prolonged the finding of the true cause of the disease.