Class Year

2024

Document Type

Student Research Paper

Date of Creation

Spring 2024

Department 1

History

Abstract

Nineteenth-century America saw the emergence of two seemingly parallel entities - the epidemic disease of cholera and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon faith. To understand the intersection of Mormons and cholera, one must look within the interdisciplinary framework of Civil War-era history, religion, and epidemiology. Cholera epidemics in 1832 and 1849 coincided with the mass Mormon migration west, causing great suffering and death for Mormons traveling by land and sea. While their westward exodus exposed them to cholera, their religious teachings also contributed to why they contracted the disease. The Word of Wisdom, their religious doctrine received as a revelation from God, prohibited the consumption of “hot drinks,” referring to boiled water, tea, and coffee, and “strong drinks,” referring to alcoholic beverages. These drinks all have anti-cholera properties, and if consumed, could have alleviated cholera’s impact among the Mormon population and protected them from infection. In this paper, I will examine the unique relationship between cholera and the Mormon faith, and I will argue two specific tenets - that cholera helped shape Mormon history demographically and geographically, and that the Mormon religion itself affected this group’s understanding of the disease and also made them more vulnerable to contracting and succumbing to it.

Comments

Written for HIST 425: Seminar in the American Civil War

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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