The following excerpt is Part I from Fanny Crosby’s autobiography:
Fanny Crosby’s Life-Story, 1905 edition,
Everywhere Publishing Company, NY
CHOLERA EPIDEMIC BEGINS
“Toward the latter part of 1846, there came ominous news to our institution, indicating that a great danger hung above us and was soon to fall. We were no more alive to apprehension in general matters than were ‘seeing people,’ but it must be admitted that this news cast a very sober feeling over our little band of students. The dread epidemic of cholera was coming!
There seemed no way to stop it when it once started on the warpath; medical methods at that time were largely inadequate. The disease is now better understood and more easily fought than in those days; science has made many long and profitable marches since then, and brought back among its trophies the means of stamping it out or warding it off.
But in 1846 things were different, and it was as good as known that the dread spectre had started westward from pestilence laden streets and jungles of India and that it was only a question of a little time when it would reach American shores.
We were not long in studying up everything that could be learned on the subject; those who read to us never had more attentive listeners than at that time. We learned that in 1817, when the eyes of physicians were first turned toward this disease, the frightened inhabitants of India were calling it ‘Mordechie,’ Arabic for ‘Deathblow,’ which sufficiently indicated its terrible character.
It was said to have ‘originated’ in a little town named Jessore, about seventy miles north of Calcutta, but that was no doubt merely where the epidemic of 1846-49 was first discovered.
The disease had existed for ages in one place and another, and even a great Roman philosophical and medical writer named Celcus, who lived in the time of the emperor Augustus, made mention of it, or of something very much like it.
So the little town of Jessore may be termed merely the place where the terrible disease gathered its hosts before starting out to overrun the world on this particular campaign.
In the early part of 1846, it descended upon Tehran, Persia, and killed 20,000 people before it left the place. Sometimes it would poison one’s blood and life would be extinct in a few hours. The disease went all over India, killing 6,300 British soldiers as well as numbered hosts of natives, and finally itself an army of invasion, drew up its lines of attack and advanced into Europe.
By August 1848 it was in Berlin, and about the close of September, it reached that great camp of ‘all sorts and conditions’ of people in London. Before it left England, it had taken over 70,000 lives.
It is needless to say that all these facts were watched with breathless anxiety by people in New York. Of course there were no cables in that day or even any ‘ocean greyhounds,’ but numerous packet-ships and some slow steamers were constantly sailing back and forth, and news had facilities of travel which it did not fail to use to the full advantage…….
…..to be continued…….