[An unforeseeable disease. Measures taken by the doctors during and after the cholera-epidemic in Copenhagen in 1853].

Abstract

When the cholera-epidemic came to Copenhagen in the summer of 1853, the doctors had to deal with a lot of problems. What was the disease after all? How did it spread and was it infectious between human beings? The doctors were not sure and did not agree about these questions, but still they had to handle the great epidemic, which nearly after it ended, had killed 5000 people. This article illuminate some of the problems which faced the doctors in their fight against the disease. Copenhagen was a very unhygienic city at that time with no sewerage, bad water supply, very densely built-up, and densely populated. The doctors wanted the politicians to solve these problems, but it was mostly in the field of better hygienic and nutrition, where the doctors could handle the problems themselves, that something happened. The fear of the disease didn't overrule the political and economic agendas and it wasn't clear which measures that had to be done to combat the cholera. The epidemic itself didn't create many changes in Copenhagen.