118 THE EPIDEMIC OF 1841-49.
York" started, and all remained well on board until sixteen days after leaving port, when cases of cholera occurred. Before her arrival at Staten Island (the quarantine station of New York) seven of the steerage passengers had died, and 12 sick were landed there. Nothing like cholera existed up to that time on Staten Island, or, in fact, in any other part of America. One of the men who assisted in removing the sick from the ship to the hospital was seized with cholera, and died two days afterwards. A nurse in the same building, without having any communication with the cholera patients, took the disease and died. Several other cases occurred among persons brought into contact with the sick, and among the emigrants there were sixty-three cases and twenty-nine deaths. The disease did not spread, "although it is known that numbers escaped from the quarantine and went into the city (New York), and that a considerable intercourse was kept up between those who were within the enclosure and persons visiting them from without. In a filthy German boarding-house, containing about 200 inmates, huddled together in the most disorderly confusion, two cases of cholera occurred in individuals who had escaped from quarantine. The establishment was broken up, and the inmates scattered over the city, and yet the disease did not follow. A sharp frost intervened; the weather, though previously mild and temperate, became wintry, and the disease entirely subsided."[1]
Nearly simultaneously with this occurrence in Staten Island, cholera was introduced into New Orleans. The "Swanton" sailed from Havre on the 3rd of November, having also German emigrants on board, these people
- ↑ Report of the General Board of Health on the Cholera of 1848-49,' Appendix C, p. 89. London, 1852.
