More than 25,000 people died as a result of this disease. It was the first acid test of the then young surgeon Ramón Emeterio Betances.
The cholera epidemic in the mid-nineteenth century left a balance of more than 25,000 deaths in a single year. Photo: Shutterstock
the epidemic of anger, in the mid-nineteenth century left a balance of more than 25,000 deaths in a single year. It has been the deadliest chapter in Puerto Rican history.
It is an acute intestinal disease that is contracted by ingesting the microbe Vibrio cholerae, present in water contaminated with fecal material or vomit of those infected. Symptoms include diarrhea, frequent bowel movements, cramps, seizures, vomiting, and fever.
The disease was first identified in India. While advancing through the Caribbean, strict quarantine compliance was maintained on ships in Puerto Rico. But, his arrival was inevitable. The epidemic entered on November 10, 1855 by Naguabo.
The epidemic spread from one town to another, reaching its peak when it hit Mayagüez and San Germán.
The more the virus spread, the more the lack of doctors became evident. For this, the councils organized Health Boards, trying to have a doctor or an apothecary.
home medicine
The Mayagüez Health Board circulated instructions on the treatments that could be applied, even without a doctor. These consisted of the application of a compound of 8 ounces of brandy, 6 ounces of strong vinegar, half an ounce of mustard, 2 drachmas of camphor, 2 cloves of ground garlic, exposed to the sun for 3 days.
Also, a potion containing half a drachm of soda carbonate, 20 grams of common salt and 7 grams of potash eximuriate should be taken. The use of the “rompe zaraguey” plant was recommended. With these treatments nausea, feeling cold, diarrhoea, thirst and vomiting were calmed, but none could prevent the spread of the disease because it was not known how to combat it.
Likewise, “provisional” hospitals were improvised, which were like asylums to collect the poor and prevent them from dying in the open.
In the fields, the construction of cemeteries was allowed. The neighborhood commissioners dug deep trenches the size of a person and dumped lime.
The figure of Betances
Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances was a crucial figure in the medical care he provided in Mayagüez. For this remarkable doctor, the patient should be observed to apply the remedy at the appropriate time.
He used emetics, or emetics, like ipecac; to control vomiting and diarrhea, he used laudanum, opium powder, and paregoric elixir, a mixture of opium and alcohol.
Later, all his medical experience would serve him when he lived in Paris, at the time of writing about the treatment he applied to those invaded by the “microbe”.
In 1890 Betances described the image of the choleric in the following words:
“The facies (sic) of the patient expresses his anguish and suffering; and since the danger in which he finds himself is not hidden from him, the expression of terror, which is not erased even with the exhaustion of strength in an emaciated face and whose eyes sink into the orbit surrounded by a violet halo, gives him a particular physiognomy that is never forgotten again when it has been observed only once”.
Perhaps the political Betances took shape in recognition of the difficulties of surviving in the colony, through the direct contact he had with his patients from all social classes, which allowed him to understand how difficult living conditions were for the homeless. .