BOOK REVIEWS: Cholera 1832: The Social Response to An Epidemic

R. J. MORRIS, Cholera 1832. The social response to an epidemic, London, Croom Helm, 1976, 8vo, pp. 228, illus., £7.50. The first person in the British Isles to suffer from verified cholera was in Sunderland, and he died on 26 October 1831. Thereafter there was a country-wide epidemic lasting into 1832, and then three more, in 1848 to 1849, 1853 to 1854, and 1866. The medical aspects of these events are interesting enough, especially the gradual accumulation of evidence favouring a water-borne infection, but of equal importance and fascination is society's reaction to the onslaught of this disease, newly arrived in Britain. Dr. Morris surveys this response to stress during the first outbreak of 1831 to 1832, and provides us with a graphic account, well written and with scholarly documentation. The part played by the administrative, commercial and working classes, and by the evangelicals is detailed. The failure of the medical profession to cope with the disease is certainly true, but the author does not have sufficient background of early nineteenth-century medicine to account for this adequately. In earlier historical periods he is even less accurate and cannot have used the advice of a medical historian. Perhaps he should have left most of the medical or "internal" evidence to a person qualified to deal with it and confined his attention more to the "external" or social factors which he deals with expertly.