Communicating Disease in 19th-Century America: The Role of the Telegraph in Shaping Public Responses to Epidemics

The introduction of the electromagnetic telegraph in the mid-nineteenth century allowed news to spread at the speed of millions of miles per second – far faster than even the most virulent pathogen. By separating the message from the messenger, the telegraph also “decontaminated” news of disease: the bearer of news was less likely to themselves be a vector. This quantum leap in communications allowed public health officials to better prepare for disease outbreaks, and afforded people with the means to do so more time to evacuate cities before disease arrived, as during the 1878 yellow fever epidemic in the Mississippi Valley. Rapid long-distance communication could also spread misinformation and confusion about disease. In 1888, news of cholera outbreaks in Paris and New York circulated via telegraph throughout the U.S., causing panic in Midwestern cities about the imminent arrival of the disease, despite the fact that cholera outbreaks are usually traceable to contaminated water sources.

Just as the telegraph facilitated the dissemination of information about disease, disease affected the transmission of information. A yellow fever epidemic in 1853 brought telegraphic communication almost to a standstill in the south as operators fell ill and died. After the Civil War, operators retained a sense of civic duty; during the 1878 epidemic, many remained “at the key” to keep communication flowing, even as other white collar workers evacuated the cities.

This paper argues that, by separating news about disease from news carriers, the telegraph transformed understandings of and public response to disease outbreaks, in particular by allowing Americans to think of disease outbreaks as national, rather than local, phenomena. But disease continued to shape the physical circulation of news, even in the new electric age: ultimately, the bodies of telegraph operators – themselves susceptible to disease – were central parts of the telegraph infrastructure.