Cholera is caused by humidity and a high dew point? Wow, now that’s some real science! I’m sure they never thought that their great scientific discoveries were going to be laughed at as much as we laugh at the fashion of the day; dresses with hoops the size of battleships.
I’m also sure that today’s scientists would get quite indignant if you suggested that some day, people of the future will laugh at them just as much. **cough cough**Global warming**cough cough**
In another vein, look at the disparity in casualties in the skirmish between the British and Persians. We are at the beginning of the period of greatest European colonial power, and it’s because the gap between European military technology and organization and the rest of the world will never be larger. With the exception of Adowa in 1898, when the Ethiopians upset the Italians, and one or two skirmishes in South Africa, any battle between Eurpoeans and the natives will be a blowout in favor of the Europeans. I supppose you could include Litte Big Horn, too. However, the common denominator in these fights is that the natives must have overwhelming numerical superiority and are willing to suffer enormous casualties to “win.”
Kind of ironic that H. G. Wells’ book “War of the Worlds” was a commentary on this; to the natives, the European armies could well have been a vastly superior alien technology. Wells was reminding his readers that “there is always a bigger fish,” even though in 1897 there were no bigger fish in the pond.
By the 1850s, "Sanitationists" such as Florence Nightingale had correlated cholera and many other diseases with dirty water and dirty people, but they were unaware of the specific means of transmission of various diseases. They knew that alcoholic beverages were usually safer than water, but they didn't know that a tot of gin in a gallon of water would make it safe to drink. They knew that boiling clothes and sheets would kill vermin and reduce disease, but they didn't know that boiling also kills germs in water or on surfaces.