Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>After cholera departed in 1836, the view that the disease had been a highly selective predator that left prudent, temperate, and clean people alone became solidified. Temperance advocates had amplified the delusive narrative and minimized the suffering during the pandemic to maintain alcohol as the most significant impediment to achieving health. Most people who knew cholera’s real power kept their views in their memories, only revealing them later, when reflecting on the tragedies that they witnessed. Dr. Charles Wilkins Short’s 1838 public reflection on the pandemic as being as severe in the US as in other places, or even more severe, proved to be the lone exception amid a public chorus that explained away, minimized, and hid cholera’s terrible reality. Retrospective analysis support Short’s criticism as per capita mortality in several American places exceeded that recorded in the metropolises of Europe.</jats:p>