I'm in that kind of mood where I want to write about horrible infectious diseases. Cholera, maybe. Cholera can be scary as hell. Super treatable, it's just a matter of rehydration. Nowadays if you can get timely treatment, you should be okay. But before people figured that out? Very bad news. Lots of really ridiculous treatments. Castor oil. Who the fuck looks at people dying from the most ungodly awful diarrhea and thinks 'hm, let's give them a laxative.' Good job, 19th century folks. Couldn't go wrong. There were lots of quack doctors selling medicines that were really just water and some herbs that did absolutely nothing, just trying to cash in on a population that was frightened and desperate for a cure. And because cholera can be so intense, it has been known to kill in a matter of hours after the symptoms start in some of the worst recorded strains (the body goes into shock from extreme dehydration.) And the incubation period can be very short too, sometimes as short as two hours. Which means in the worst cases, you could drink contaminated water and be dead in less than a day. Scary stuff. And that's not even getting into the cholera riots in the 19th. That's some wild stuff. People would get into huge panic during epidemics, especially if they were quarantined in a dangerous place or if they got it in their heads that the doctors were working against them. Panic can be one of the most dangerous things in an epidemic. Yeah, cholera is interesting.