Cholera is a horrific disease that gets contracted from contaminated water. And when we say “contaminated,” please forego any notions you have of icky non-filtered tap water that leaves a bit of lime deposit on the rim of the tap. “Contaminated” in this case means that it has bacteria in it from poop. Remember what we said about no clean water and bad sanitation on the Oregon Trail? Here’s how it might have gone: Person A poops in some water, and then Person B ingests some of that water. That’s it in a nutshell. And if loads of people everywhere have cholera and are stricken with diarrhea, it’s really going to increase the chances of drinking poop water, accidentally or otherwise.
As Literacy Central explains, folks on the trail used whatever water they could find, like that in streams, ponds, rivers, and so forth. There was no guarantee of coming across any water sources while wandering through a vast expanse of unknown grasslands and deserts, so desperate settlers had to make do with whatever they found. Settlers unwittingly made the situation worse by digging holes to relieve themselves, and then having rain flush (so to speak) waste material into water used for drinking. Folks then drank that water or used it for cooking. Plus, there wasn’t a lot of hand-washing with antibacterial soap going on, or other modern disease prevention methods.
