In 1832, a cholera epidemic killed 3,515 New Yorkers. At the time, the total population of the city was 250,000–the equivalent mortality rate today would exceed 100,000 deaths in our city of 8 million.

The New York Times profiles the 1832 cholera outbreak in a piece about the influence of epidemics on the metropolis. In it, Times writer John Noble Wilford describes how the horror of the disease alerted the city to its lack of sanitation and inadequate public health care:

Many victims, nearly half the cases at one hospital, died within a day of admission. After private hospitals began turning away patients, the city set up emergency public hospitals in schools and other buildings.

Finally, after the work of Dr. Snow in London [who established the connection between contaminated water and disease] and a lesser cholera outbreak in New York in 1866, the Metropolitan Board of Health was established with doctors in commanding roles and broad powers to clean up the city. Inspectors went to houses and burned the clothing of people who had just died. They cleared the filth, spread lime and instructed survivors in proper sanitation.

Despite the newfound methods of disease prevention, public health officials were not prepared for what was coming down the pike. In 1918, immediately following the destruction of World War I, a killer flu–called the “Spanish Flu” at the time–infected at least 30 million people worldwide and killed 675,000 Americans. The flu’s swift spread and lethal symptoms rivaled the destructive force of the medieval Black Death.

Last year, Secrets of The Dead joined Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, Chief of the Division of Molecular Pathology, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, who was hunting the entire genetic sequence of the influenza virus responsible for 1918’s devastating global epidemic. Read interviews with Dr. Taubenberger, learn about the spread of the deadly virus in an interactive feature, and more at SECRETS OF THE DEAD – KILLER FLU online.