Cholera in Post-Revolutionary Paris: A Cultural History

Cholera terrified and fascinated nineteenth-century Europeans more than any other modern disease. Its symptoms were gruesome, its sources were mysterious, and it tended to strike poor neighborhoods hardest. In this insightful cultural history, Catherine Kudlick explores the dynamics of class relations through an investigation of the responses to two cholera epidemics in Paris.

While Paris climbed toward the height of its urban and industrial growth, two outbreaks of the disease ravaged the c...