La marche du choléra en France : 1832-1854 - article ; n°1 ; vol.33, pg 125-142

Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations - Année 1978 - Volume 33 - Numéro 1 - Pages 125-142
The spread of cholera in France in 1832 and in 1854
By mapping the evidence of excess mortality month by month for these two cholera epidemics, which were the most deadly and most typical of their kind, the authors are able to provide a kinetic description of the propagation of the Asian disease throughout the whole of France. In the first epidemic, the contagion hardly went beyond the outer perimeter of the Paris Basin, where from April to November the departments most seriously affected suffered twice the number of deaths as in the preceding years. On the other hand, in 1854, the epidemic which raged in the Northeastern quarter of France also became rampant in the South, in areas bordering on the Mediterranean. More-over, in these two centers, the virulence of the disease was such that the number of burials quadrupled during eight months in the departments of Ariege and Haute-Marne.
Traditionally it has been assumed that hydric anademia explains, for the most part; the paths taken by the disease and its varing intensity, but recent epidemiological research demonstrates the importance of direct interhuman contamination. Consequently, beyond those vectors which have often been involved in epidemics, that is to say soldiers and migrants, we should also consider, in France in the first half of the nineteenth century, the evolution in the structure and volume of commercial exchanges. The increase in the circulation of men and goods may account for the fact that new areas of propagation of the disease appeared in 1854, pointing to an increase in mobility and the opening up of entire regions to trade.
18 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.