Social investment in medical forms: The 1866 cholera scare and beyond

With rare exceptions, th 1866 cholera scare has been regarded as an anti-cl imax to the epidemics of the previous decades. Cholera did not assume epide mic form in Canada in 1866, and the scare has been seen as a non-event. In contrast to earlier epidemics, however, on this occasion the government act ed rapidly in anticipation of disease. A conference of medical experts was convened, existing wisdom on cholera was assembled, and a public education campaign was conducted to reassure and prepare citizens. The Public Health Act was proclaimed and a group of doctors, themselves still struggling for professional recognition, was accorded extensive powers over the police of towns and the conduct of individual citizens. Quarantine regulations were r eorganized and made much more extensive. Locally, it is suggested, the threat of cholera stimulated interest and act ivity in the name of the public health, particularly through sanitary initi atives. The scare contributed to the formation of local associations, conne cted in a network that would later issue in an attempt at national sanitary investigation. The deputy minister of agriculture, Joseph-Charles Tache, r ecently engaged to reform the statistical apparatus of government, in allia nce with other activists, attempted to invest the domain of public health i n forms that would make it into an object of intervention.