From National Geographic: Cholera: Tracking the First Truly Global Disease.
Posted on June 17, 2004 07:14 AM. Filed under: history & archaeology.A new and terrifying disease struck England in October of 1831 and quickly spread across the kingdom. Over the next two years, thousands died from this mysterious illness, so virulent that a person could be in good health at dawn and be buried at dusk.
Citizens lived in terror, sealing their doors and windows at night against the feared "night air." There was no cure.
The disease was Asiatic cholera, also known as spasmodic cholera of India, its place of origin. A huge epidemic in Bengal in 1917 first drew the attention of European physicians. [continue]