The 1866 cholera epidemic in Brussels: a spatio-temporal reconstruction

Belgium was struck by cholera seven times in the nineteenth century. The epidemic of 1866
was the worst, with 43,400 victims (Eggerickx and Poulain 1988, 1991). Cholera entered the
country in March 1866 from different directions and claimed many victims until early December,
peaking in the summer. The city of Brussels was hit particularly hard, with 3,469 cholera deaths
(Falise 1979).
Cholera is a bacterial infectious disease with an incubation period of a few days. The
main symptoms of cholera are severe vomiting, diarrhoea and a blue skin tone (Kiple 2003).
Barely half of the patients survived. The disease is mainly spread by contaminated water. Until
the late nineteenth century, people usually had to rely on (often polluted) wells and waterways
for their drinking water. The real cause of cholera was unknown in 1866, even though the
English doctor John Snow had pointed out the dangers of polluted water as early as the 1850s.
A breakthrough only came in 1883, when the German Robert Koch discovered the cholera
bacterium. Previously, it was thought that the disease was caused by so-called miasmas, foul
smells from polluting waterways and street refuse (Oris 1991).
In this contribution, we examine who were the main victims of the epidemic in Brussels and
show the course of the epidemic across the city from the first death to the last.