Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>From late 1830 into the spring of 1832, news flowed into the US about the spread of cholera from Asia and through Europe. America’s newspapers circulated the information broadly and provided mixed views to their readers. Casualties from the disease seemed shockingly high, while medical reports suggested that only the intemperate, impoverished, and filthy succumbed. US cities responded by enacting quarantines on ships arriving from places that the pandemic had struck but not without controversy. Medical authorities generally held to views of the disease as having atmospheric causation and dismissed quarantines as superstitious. They also argued that the US did not have the poverty, immorality, and degradation among its people that made the disease so deadly in the eastern hemisphere.</jats:p>