Matthew Packard, age 12, of Indianapolis, Indiana, for his question:
Who discovered the cure for cholera?
When we hear about wonder drugs and miraculous modern cures for this and that, we tend to think that medical science can cure whatever ails us in a jiffy. But when accidents and diseases really strike, we learn to our sorrow that the doctor can do only so much to help us. The stern laws of nature still prevail. And they insist that the personal owner of a human body is responsible for doing everything possible to protect it and keep it in healthy condition. In the case of cholera, these same rules also apply to all communities and nations.
Cholera is a life and death drama of pollution that has scourged mankind through the ages. It can spread like wildfire, claiming countless lives around the world ¬just because somewhere, some community ignored the basic rules of decent sanitation. It would be nice to know that medical science had a sure vaccine to give everybody life long immunization, plus a quick and easy cure for stricken cholera victims. But these perfect solutions are still dreams.
Cholera spreads faster than any other plague and major epidemics date back to 500 B.C. Countless dedicated persons tried, but nobody could do much about it until the 1800s. Help became possible cohere doctors saw that public health is related to public sanitation and researchers of many nationalities began studying germs. The list of those who helped to accumulate what we know about cholera goes on and one still waiting for that someone to invent the perfect solution.
In 1849, Felix Poucet reported finding the enemy bacillus in the body wastes of cholera patients. In 1883, the comma shaped Vibrio cholerea was isolated and studied by Robert Koch, who also tracked down amthrax, the cruel cattle killer: In the 1900s, several strains of the cholera vibrio were identified and many researchers toiled to produce immunizing vaccines. Others traced the course of the disease and sought suitable methods to treat its victims.
Jaime Ferran in Spain and Waldemar Haffkine in India produced vaccine solutions containing heat destroyed bacteria. These protective treatments were improved by Adolf Dieudome, Col. Edward Bright, G.A. Vedder, tJ. van Dam and other medical researchers. Nowadays, two innoculations can protect a person for a year and perhaps two years. The best cholera clinics can relieve some of the suffering and reduce the death toll of cholera victims.
But our best efforts fight a losing battle without help. The arrival of an infected person can contaminate a whole community in a few days. All our public health resources, plus maximum medical effort must be mobilized to keep the spreading plague within bounds.
In addition, global health organizations must keep a vigilant watch on pest areas where cholera bacillis are known to breed and spread. Perhaps the cure, or, rather, the solutions, will be found in new human attitudes. Cholera is caused and spread by shoddy sanitation, which is a particularly bad kind of human pollution. And, like all types of pollution, it is a global problem that ignores man made boundaries, relentlessly contaminating the whole world.