Caption
Chart Shewing the Progress of the Spasmodic Cholera
Summary
This map uses lines to show cholera’s spread around the world in 1832. These lines closely follow trade routes of the time and therefore contradicted prevailing miasmatic ideas about how cholera spread.
A miasma is polluted air. It was thought that air filled with particles from decomposed matter carried a poison that could cause disease. The miasmatic theory of the transmission of cholera persisted until well after Robert Koch’s publication in 1884 of his discovery that cholera is caused by bacteria.
The USA is drawn to a different scale.
Licensing
The two-dimensional work of art depicted in this image is in the public domain in the United States and in those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years. This photograph of the work is also in the public domain in the United States (see Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.).
Source
The image was scanned from Fig 3.10a in Tom Koch (2005). Cartographies of Disease. ESRI Press, Redlands, California.
The original map was published in Brigham, A. 1832. A treatise on epidemic cholera. Hartford: H. and F.J. Huntington
Collection
 Transmission Routes of Cholera (1817-1831) |
 The Progress of the Spasmodic Cholera, 1832 |
 United States Cholera Route – Epidemic of 1832 |
 Broad Street Outbreak of Cholera, London, 1854 |
 The Geographical Distribution of Health and Disease, 1856 |
 The March of Cholera in 1865 |
 The Diffusion of Cholera in the United States in 1866 |
 Diffusion of Cholera in Eastern Africa, 1864-1871 |
 Cholera Diffusion in Zanzibar c. 1869 |
 Historical cholera pathways in 1817-1823 and 1863-1869 |
 Routes of Asiatic Cholera (1885) |
 Network of cholera diffusion in India, c1931-1953 |
 Cholera, 2000-2001 |
 Cholera, 2003 |