When it hit the US in 1832, Asiatic cholera, a waterborne disease, was thought to be airborne, so piles of coal and sulfur were set up around cities and then burned so as to create huge clouds of acrid smoke that would hinder the spread of the disease. Asiatic cholera was spread throughout the Midwest by soldiers sent to fight the Blackhawk War in 1832.
I wonder if it might have helped anyway. That is, when you burn sulfurous coal or sulfur, it produces sulfur dioxide, which when mixed with water, produces sulfuric acid, like acid rain. So open sources of water would become acidified.
This is important, because cholera prefers alkaline water.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=241529