cholera – Nashville Historical Newsletter

Musings by Mike Slate.

Just as in our national history, the question of personal safety has arisen many times in Nashville. For at least fifteen years after our 1780 founding, not a man, woman, or child was safe. Indians devised surprise attacks again and again on the encroaching settlers, and many lives were lost – some, like Jonathan Jennings, through horrific means.

Never has there been a Nashville panic like that of February 1862. After Fort Donelson fell on February 16, it became clear that Union troops would occupy Nashville. Many Nashville secessionists quickly scattered to the winds, while others, determined to remain, hunkered down in fearful anticipation of the arrival of the invading army.

Soon afterwards, as if the Civil War had not brought enough agony, one of several vicious cholera epidemics claimed as many as 800 Nashville lives in the summer of 1866. Seven years later, in 1873, nearly 750 Nashvillians perished in another outbreak of the terrible disease.

By the end of the day on March 22, 1916, about thirty-two square blocks of East Nashville had become a wasteland. A particularly voracious fire, driven by high winds, had devoured nearly 700 buildings and homes. Not many years later, on March 14, 1933, another unwelcome guest—a savage tornado—roared through East Nashville threatening again the very foundations of the community.

Remains of *a fire engine from Company #4 near Russell and Fatherland Streets after the 1916 Edgefield fire (TSLA photo)*

During the 1960s Nashville was a highly visible stage for the Civil Rights Movement. At times it looked as though our city might self-destruct out of racial tension. Neither whites nor blacks felt safe as the pressures created by mandated integration resulted in legal battles, demonstrations, sit-ins, and riots.

Nashville was left largely to its own devices during the destructive flood of May 2010, when it received more than 13 inches of rain in two days. The fast-rising water displaced 10,000 residents, produced $2.3 billion in property damage, and caused a number of deaths. Receiving little help from outside, neighbors helped neighbors, and volunteers turned out by the hundreds to help with clean-up efforts.

Late on March 2, 2020, a category-EF3 tornado roared through Nashville and into Mt. Juliet along nearly the same path as the 1933 storm, causing five deaths, over 200 serious injuries, and $1.5 billion in property damage, including a disproportionate number of churches and school buildings. The Covid-19 pandemic had just begun to affect the health of the community as tornado clean-up got underway, and the remainder of the year was consumed by efforts to sustain schools, businesses, and healthcare facilities during a time of unprecedented illness and hardship. And then, just as new vaccines brought hope, the Christmas morning bomb blast on 2^nd Avenue downtown shattered our peace once again.

Second Avenue, Nashville, after Christmas bombing 2020

Yet somehow, through these and other perilous times, Nashville has survived, and even thrived. We have always been an industrious lot, constructing landmark public buildings, universities, churches, libraries, businesses, and homes. More important, we have strengthened our collective character and have raised our children to become leaders in business, education, law, politics, medicine, and music. We have produced artists and poets, authors and publishers, factory technicians and practical nurses. We, along with our nation, have become a diversified and enriched society that must continue to mature. We have proudly earned our motto, “Nashville Strong!”

by Kathy B. Lauder.

As you explore the Nashville City Cemetery website, you will come across a link to 19^th century City Cemetery burial records that have been made available through the Nashville Public Library. Not only do the records list the name, age, gender, race, and date of death of most individuals buried in the cemetery, but they may also include the cause of death – data that can prove both startling and informative.

A careful reader will notice how profoundly medical terminology has changed since the 19^th century, largely because of improved diagnostic procedures. Many older terms (some of which were sublimely imprecise!) have simply fallen out of fashion. For example, among the more frequently listed causes of death in the mid-1800s are apoplexy, or softening of the brain (cerebral hemorrhage or stroke); dropsy (edema or congestive heart failure); catarrh (influenza, the croup, or even a common cold); consumption (tuberculosis); marasmus (a general term for diseases of infants and children, including malnutrition, rickets, and tuberculosis); dysentery or flux (intestinal inflammation); scrofula, or the King’s evil (tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands, particularly those in the neck), La Grippe (influenza); mortification (gangrene, which killed a disturbing number of small boys); and erysipelas, or St. Anthony’s fire (a streptococcal infection typified by severe inflammation of the skin or mucous membranes).

A few illnesses appeared so frequently at certain times of the year, they were named for the associated seasons: winter fever was almost always pneumonia. The summer complaint (cholera infantum) was food poisoning caused by improperly stored food, especially milk and meats.

Many once-fatal diseases have been largely eliminated. Today’s children are routinely vaccinated against the most common childhood diseases of their parents and grandparents: measles, mumps, and chicken pox. Other deadly diseases swept through 19^th century communities in frightening epidemics. Five thousand Memphis residents died of yellow fever in 1878, but vaccination has proved greatly effective against it in recent times. Cholera, spread by contaminated water and poor hygiene, killed nearly 1,500 people a year in New Orleans alone in the early 1850s, but it can now be successfully treated if diagnosed early. (Hundreds of people in the Nashville City Cemetery died of cholera.) As many as 17,000 American children died of diphtheria each year before a vaccine was developed in the early 1900s; today diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and tetanus (lockjaw) are seldom found anywhere in the industrialized world, thanks to infant vaccination programs. Smallpox, which killed up to 500 million people during the 20^th century, is now considered to be completely eradicated. Polio, which peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, paralyzing and killing over half a million people throughout the world each year, has now been virtually eliminated from the Western Hemisphere.

Hundreds of polio victims during the 1950s and 1960s were forced to stay in tank respirators, known as iron lungs, in order to breathe.

Some of the “diseases” named in the burial registers tell their own sad tales: childbed . . . smothered (tragically common among infants, who often slept in beds with other family members . . . found dead in a well (11-year-old) . . . hung himself (12-year-old slave boy) . . . kicked by a horse (young woman, 18) . . . burned by accident (6-year-old girl) . . . and found dead at wash landing (infant). Spelling can sometimes be a challenge when deciphering the lists: dispepsey . . . fever . . . numonia . . . stabed . . . appoleptick . . . and dearhaera are all found in these records.

In 1894 dentist M. Thrasher wrote, “So deadly has teething become, that one-third of the Human Family die before the twenty deciduous teeth have fully appeared.” However, teething, once regularly blamed for infant deaths, was often innocent. Nineteenth-century doctors overlooked the reality that teething babies were exposed to many life-threatening illnesses, including influenza, tetanus, and meningitis, and that lethal rashes, fevers, and diarrhea often had other causes than dentition. Nursing mothers were likely to wean teething babies, switching from breast milk to dairy, which spoiled quickly without adequate refrigeration. Even medical treatments to soothe teething infants could cause illness – consider such practices as blistering, bleeding, or lancing gums (sometimes with the fingernails!), applying leeches, or prescribing medications containing opium, morphine, or mercury. Before 1970 paregoric could be purchased without a prescription, and loving parents who dutifully rubbed it on their babies’ swollen gums would have been horrified to learn that the licorice-flavored tonic was a mixture of opium and alcohol!

Teething and hives were both high on the list of common causes of death in the mid-19^th century, obviously a case of mistaking a symptom for the true illness. Other entries on the burial lists leave us wishing for just a little more information: complicated . . . died in Virginia . . . cramps . . . intemperance . . . and the blithely simplistic died suddenly. And, of course, there are always a few items on the list that simply mystify us: worms . . . insanity . . . gravel in blades . . . found dead on Tower Island . . . and shot by Judson. Anyone who takes a look at the City Cemetery burial records will discover a compelling chronicle of life and death in earlier times. (2010)

Previously published in Monuments & Milestones, the Nashville City Cemetery newsletter.

Tag: cholera

Perilous Times in Nashville

Life and Death in the 19th Century