1742 — Aug-Summer 1743, Dysentery Epidemic, East Haven (population ~500), CT –43-60

—>60  Force. “A Proposed Code of Public Health Regulations for California.” V. X, N.6, p. 258.

—  43  Caulfield. “Some Common Diseases of Colonial Children.” Transactions. 1942, p. 49.

Narrative Information

Caulfield: “A serious epidemic in East Haven, Connecticut, began in August, 1742, and, like many other dysentery epidemics, returned the following summer, causing altogether forty-three deaths in a population of about five hundred.[1]….Here also are found the first good examples of dysentery multiple deaths: two children of Daniel Potter died on September 9; his wife and another child died on September 15; and a fourth child died on September 20. There were three deaths in both the Mallory and Moulthrop families, and two deaths each in the Austin, Roberts, Russell, and Smith families….” (Caulfield. “Some Common Diseases of Colonial Children.” Transactions. 1942, p. 49.)

Force: “In the year 1824 one Stephen Dodd, being pastor of the Congregational Church in East Haven, Connecticut, published a thin little volume wherein was set down the history and vital statistics of his town, between its settlement in 1664 and the year 1800. Those who are inclined to charge our modern congested cities with every crime against public health may read with profit the story of East Haven.

“In 1736, being then about 500 souls, the town was visited by a sickness of a throat ail which carried off twenty-six persons of all ages. Likewise, in 1742-43 there died of a dysentery with fever no less than sixty. From then on the record shows an approximate annual death rate of thirty per thousand for dysentery and fifteen for a canker rash among the children. Is this not a striking commentary on the belief that the simple country life makes for resistance that can afford to ignore sanitation?

Source

Caulfield, Ernest. “Some Common Diseases of Colonial Children.” Transactions of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol. 35, April 1942, pp. 4-65. Accessed 1-17-2018 at: https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/865

Force, John N., M.D. “A Proposed Code of Public Health Regulations for California.” Pp. 258-259 in: The California State Journal of Medicine (Philip Mills Jones, M.D., Editor).Vol. X, No. 6. San Francisco: Medical Society State of California, June, 1912. Google preview accessed 1-29-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=-7E1AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

[1] Cites, in footnote 138, Dodd, East Haven Register, p. 80.