AePVIII_Scheffer

Scheffer, Krisztina,
HNM Semmelweis Museum for Medical History,
and HEFS AEC, Budapest

„Let every man keep ready at home .... “ Excerpts from the Possibilities of Curing Cholera during the First Epidemic, 1831   DOI:https://doi.org/10.71067/AePVIII-2022-127-142  
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Aegyptus et Pannonia VIII, Acta Symposii anno 2021, Plants and Health from Ancient Egypt. to the Present Day.
Proceedings of the Conference held between 14th and 16th October 2021, Budapest; ed. by Hedvig Győry.
Published by The Ancient Egyptian Committee of the Hungarian-Egyptian Friendship Society, Budapest 2022.
ISBN: 978-615-6571-02-1; DOI: https://doi.org/10.71067/AePVIII-2022  
Soft cover. No Jacket. 1.st Edition. 6+348 pages (24x17), with colour pictures.

Abstract:
From the outbreak of the first cholera epidemic in Hungary in June 1831 to its end, 230,000 people, or almost 3% of the population at the time, died and 421,468 became ill. The reasons for the high mortality rate include that an unknown disease spread, there were not enough doctors, and also the mistrust and ignorance, which accompanied the epidemic.
In this article we try to answer the question of what knowledge was available at the beginning of the epidemic to help common people protect themselves against the disease. To do this, we have turned to articles in the medical press of the time and to sources preserved in the pages of church registers in the medicina pastoralis. As the surviving prescriptions usually refer to herbs that were known and tried to combat the disease, we have listed the most common herbs and what was known about them at the time.