No case of cholera was reported to the Board of Health or other authorities of the town as having occurred during this time; but on close examination, it was ascertained that four deaths had taken place from the disease in its most virulent form.
That the cholera poison had really pervaded the city, was appallingly evinced by an event which occurred in its immediate vicinity.
The Baltimore almshouse is situated about two miles from the city, on sloping ground, remarkable for its beauty and salubrity, in immediate contiguity with the country-seats of several of the wealthy families of the town. It is surrounded by a farm of upwards of 200 acres, belonging to the establishment, for the most part under cultivation. The building is capable of accommodating between 600 and 700 inmates. An enclosure of about five acres, surrounded by a wall, adjoins the main building upon its north side. In the rear of this north wall is a ravine, which at one point approaches the wall to within about nine feet. This ravine is the outlet for all the filth of the establishment. It is dry in summer, but retentive of wet after rain. The space between the wall and the bed of the ravine is not under tillage, but is overgrown with a rank, weedy vegetation, common in rich waste soils. The physician of the establishment, under the same apprehension of an outbreak of cholera as had prevailed in Baltimore, had taken the same precautions against the disease, and had placed the establishment itself in a state of scrupulous cleanliness.
On the first of July cholera attacked one of the inmates. On the seventh a second attack occurred. This was followed in rapid succession by other seizures, and within the space of one month 99 inmates of the establishment had perished by cholera.
Within the building and grounds the most diligent search failed to discover anything that could account for this outbreak; but on examining the premises outside the northern wall, there was found a vast mass of filth, consisting of the overflowings of cesspools, the drainage from pigsties, and the general refuse of the establishment. “In short,” says the medical officer, “the whole space included between the ravine and the wall, upon its north side, was one putrid and pestilential mass, capable of generating, under the ardent rays of a Midsummer sun, the most poisonous and deadly exhalations.”
During the greater part of the time that this outbreak continued, a slight breeze set in pretty steadily from the north, conveying the poisonous exhalations from behind the north wall directly over the house.
The first persons attacked were those who happened to be particularly exposed to the air blowing from the north side of the building.
On the male side of the house there was no protection from the ravine. The female side was partially protected by three rows of trees. The residents on the women’s side were more numerous than on the men’s, but the attacks were considerably less.
Among the paupers, those who slept in apartments exposed to the north were attacked, those not so exposed generally escaped.
In the basement story of a building, opening directly to the north, and close to a spot which received the contents of one of the cesspools, 17 lunatics were lodged, all of whom were attacked, and all died.