“I feel like I’ve been infected by cholera,” said geographer and doctoral candidate Paul Jackson. “Someone once teased me that cholera was a sexy research topic, and I didn’t understand how that could be.”
The encroachment of diseases like SARS and bird flu into the popular mind fascinates Jackson, who studies infectious diseases, their causes and social consequences. He spoke Wednesday morning at a seminar hosted by the Comparative Program on Health and Society, on similarities between today’s bird flu fears and the fears of cholera in early 20th century society and the effect these fears have on the conception of the “filthy” urban city.
“In recent disease outbreaks, such as SARS, animals have become the key protagonists in the story,” said Jackson. “One of the things driving this is intensive livestock production. It’s one of the major breeding grounds for zoonotic diseases. Most diseases are given a geography, almost a home.”
Zoonotic diseases, which make up 75 per cent of emerging diseases in the last few decades, are caused by pathogens that cross from animals to humans. SARS, believed to have crossed into humans from raccoon-like animals called civet cats that are eaten in China’s Guangdong province, is one example.
Jackson contends that attributing a disease to a place of origin has always caused social tension in times of pandemics.
“The origin of cholera in India is both a fact of fantasy and of science,” said Jackson, mentioning an 1893 account of the mythical birthing of cholera by the “Goddess of Filth” on the shores of Jessore, Bangladesh. “It’s almost so offensive [to the people there] that it gets close to Borat-levels of ridiculous.”
“But I think it’s very evocative of many of the tensions around cholera…India and globalization, God, fate, ecology, environment, violence, and viscerality.”
In Toronto, the escalating fear of a cholera pandemic motivated the transformation of the marshy Ashbridge’s Bay into an industrial and commercial area. Cholera, transmitted by contaminated water, was thought to reside in the “filthy” marshlands rather than the local water supply.
Like the rest of the world, Canada suffered repeated cholera outbreaks from 1832 to 1871 causing an estimated 17,000 to 20,000 deaths. The disease was also blamed on immigrants, causing a public health backlash, particularly against the Irish, a situation familiar to that in Toronto’s 2003 “summer of SARS.”
“People didn’t blame the crafty virus, but the Chinese consumer,” said Jackson. “When SARS happened, people avoided Spadina Avenue, and this speaks to deep-seated fears and the scapegoating and stereotypes that flare up when disease outbreaks occur or fear of disease takes over.”
