A hero in a one-horse ambulance.

The first ominous warning came on June 25, 1832. Anticipating a cholera epidemic, the Detroit Board of Health distributed printed instructions on how to treat the dreaded disease. An accompanying proclamation from the mayor forbade vessels from any other port to land in Detroit until after an examination by a health officer.

It was too little, too late. On July 4, 370 soldiers aboard the steamer Henry Clay, en route to Chicago to fight in the Black Hawk War, were so ravaged by the disease that they were forced to stop in Detroit and set up camp at Springwells, just west of the city Two days later, the disease claimed its first lives in Detroit, immediately setting off a panic.

Many people fled the stricken city, but not all of them made it to their destination. Roadblocks were thrown up, forcing travelers to turn back. At Rochester, people from Detroit were booted out of the hotel and their baggage thrown after them, and bridges were torn up to prevent outsiders from entering the village. At Pontiac, armed sentinels were posted on the highway to keep people out.

In the summer of 1834, a second and even deadlier cholera epidemic brought the city to a virtual standstill. In one month alone, the disease claimed 7 percent of the population, including some of Detroit's best-known residents. To purify the air, huge kettles of pitch were burned at night at intervals along the streets.

In this hellish climate, a Roman Catholic priest emerged as a hero. Soon after the disease appeared, Father Martin Kundig bought an old church building and turned it into a makeshift hospital. Each day, he brought the sick to his refuge in a one-horse ambulance. He spent so much time with the sick and dying that people on the street avoided him, fearing he might spread the contagion.

Many patients who died committed their children to Kundig's care, compelling the priest to board about 30 orphans at his own expense at his asylum on Gratiot Avenue. The experience literally bankrupted him. Five years after the epidemic, some of Kundig's creditors actually seized and sold the orphans' clothes to satisfy his debts.

With the advent of modern sanitation methods, cholera has virtually disappeared in the United States and other developed countries, but outbreaks still occur in developing countries, often after floods, earthquakes and other disasters during which water and food supplies become infected with the Vibria Cholerae bacterium. Today, the disease is almost 100 percent curable as long as it is treated promptly.