The mysterious lake fever
When the Battle of Lake Erie was fought on 10 September,1813, of Perry's 532 men, 116 were ill with an unknown fever. They all showed symptoms of malaria or yellow fever or even just severe influenza, but on a freshwater lake in America?
Perry at the Battle of Lake Erie, by James Edward Kelly, 19th century (x)
And then it wasn't just the 116, after the battle there were even more and only a few of the sick survived the whole thing. But what it was, the surgeons could not explain with the best will in the world, because they all showed different symptoms that could fit to one of the above mentioned diseases. But one thing they did know was that the men had all drunk from the water of the lake, which was generally considered drinkable.
Even though a lot of sewage was discharged into it, the men filled up their barrels upstream from a ship, because the water was good and clear. However, it was deadly. What exactly the fever was has not been fully elucidated to this day, even though the water led to a great cholera epedemy in the 1830s. It was considered drinkable until the 1970s, but had already been filtered since the 1850s, and the sick people who still came were simply accepted.
It is assumed that mosquitoes and other pathogens are in fact not only responsible for one type of disease, but also for malaria, typhoid, yellow fever and cholera.
