1848

Second cholera epidemic moves from India to Russia to Britain, reaching London in September (Hempel, 111ff.).   In Jamaica, anticontagionists Gavin Milroy, sent by British Colonial Office to investigate, blamed the epidemic on poor sanitation, overcrowding, poor ventilation, viz, “’an impure or contaminated state of the atmosphere,’ arising from decomposing material and human respiration. . . . The function, format, and genre of colonial recordkeeping was in dialogue with sanitary reform efforts in the metropole,” e.g., Milroy’s correspondence with Edwin Chadwick  (Downs, 80-82, quoted at 82).