The outbreak of Cholera in Venice in 1835, its effects, and the strategies implemented to contain the disease.

Abstract

The main goal of this thesis is to investigate how the city of Venice handled the cholera outbreak in 1835–1837, explaining the consequences and difficulties that the city encountered in the process. The thesis's first chapter will delineate the concept of disease globalisation and provide readers a baseline knowledge of the historical setting in which Venice was located. The next chapters will explore the fallout from the cholera outbreak and analyse its implications in the areas of public health, social dynamics, and economics. In particular, the effects on public health will be examined in detail in the second chapter, and the socioeconomic effects will be examined in detail in the third chapter. Lastly, the concluding section will emphasise that unilateral efforts to solving widespread health concerns throughout the world are inadequate. This ca be attributed to the period following the "discovery of America" in 1492, during which human communities began to grow and become increasingly interconnected. This connectivity promoted the spread of knowledge, new approaches, historical accounts, heterogeneous cultures, and the creation of new cultural fusions, all at the same time acting as a medium for the spread of illnesses. Many diseases have spread over the world since this era, prompting historians and academics to refer to this process as the "globalisation of diseases." Notable illnesses including cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, malaria, and the black death are some of the ones causing this phenomenon. Every illness epidemic sparked a coordinated attempt to contain it, even if doing so was difficult due to the general lack of understanding, mistrust, and anxiety among the afflicted communities. The mechanisms that surfaced during the management of the cholera outbreak in Venice can be extended to address contemporary challenges posed by the recent COVID-19 pandemic in our interconnected global society.