Finished watching the documentary series “Living Pushkin” by Parfenov. Very interesting, highly recommend. Made back in 1999. How did I miss it!
P.S. Pushkin – “greetings from our quarantine to yours”.
“The cholera epidemic came to Russia from India. Fearing panic, the authorities hid the first fatal cases in Moscow from the population. The real chaos happened when the number of sick reached the thousands. Wealthy families, terrified, fled Moscow.”
Here’s what Pushkin writes to Natalia Goncharova:
“Entry to Moscow is forbidden, and here I am locked up in Boldino. (…) I have completely lost my courage, and really don’t know what to do. Clearly, this year (may it be cursed!) our wedding cannot happen. (…) It would be unforgivable to voluntarily expose oneself to the danger amidst cholera. I know well that they always exaggerate the devastation and the number of victims; a young woman from Constantinople once told me that only the rabble dies from cholera — all this is fine and superb; but still, decent people need to take precautions, as this is what saves them, not their elegance or their good manners. So, you are well sheltered from cholera in the countryside, aren’t you? We are not surrounded by quarantines, but the epidemic has not penetrated here yet.”
Such was the self-isolation then. By the way, half a million fell ill then, and every second or third patient died. Right at the start of the pandemic, I was reading a smart book about various contagions, and I remember a wonderful story about how in London, John Snow (not that one, another) identified the source of cholera spread – a water pump on Broad Street through analyzing the distribution of the infected. “The map marked the locations of water pumps and the number of deaths from cholera in each building. Snow relied on statistical data to firmly prove the connection between the water source and the disease. The resulting overall picture of the epidemic showed that the greatest number of deaths occurred around the water pump on Broad Street”. At that time, the laboratory could not yet confirm the presence of cholera. They shut off the pump, and it saved London.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 