Le ondate coleriche del Mediterraneo. Strategie e leggi per la tutela della salute pubblica nella prima metà dell’Ottocento

The choleric waves of the Mediterranean. Public Health Laws for Epidemic Control and Prevention in the First Half of 19th Century Epidemic cholera is a contagious and often fatal disease which ravaged the world over the course of the 19th century; the Indian Peninsula constituted the source from which cholera has gone extending to the countries from where the Mediterranean regions and the whole Europe were subsequently invaded. Since 1817, the cholera-morbus overcame the coasts of the Arabic Sea, and from the coasts of the Caspian Sea reached Moscow, Poland and France, and from Nice, reached the harbors of Genoa and Livorno. In fourteen years, in effect, from the shore of river Gange, the disease radiate up to the banks of the Mediterranean, at the cost of four million of human lives. From 1820, cholera spread in the Middle East up to the Mediterranean basin, invaded the Arabic peninsula, infested the whole shore of the Persian Gulf, penetrated to Syria, and, following the caravans commercial roads, reached the Turkish frontiers. Since the death toll was so high, both the Public Health Offices and physicians took great interest in the pandemic. Health laws and regulations, as well as scientific publishing, flourished. Physicians struggled to describe the disease, discover its causes, and experiment with treatments. Municipalities published accounts of the epidemics affecting their areas and sent representatives thereto to determine possible causative factors. Government and Public Health Offices had to adopt the most energetic sanitary measures for disease control and prevention. The cholera vibrio was isolated by Koch in Egypt only in 1883, but wasn’t defeated until the introduction of vaccination.