With rare exceptions, th 1866 cholera scare has been regarded as an anti-climax to the epidemics of the previous decades. Cholera did not assume epidemic form in Canada in 1866, and the scare has been seen as a non-event. In contrast to earlier epidemics, however, on this occasion the government acted rapidly in anticipation of disease. A conference of medical experts was convened, existing wisdom on cholera was assembled, and a public education campaign was conducted to reassure and prepare citizens. The Public Health Act was proclaimed and a group of doctors, themselves still struggling for professional recognition, was accorded extensive powers over the police of towns and the conduct of individual citizens. Quarantine regulations were reorganized and made much more extensive. Locally, it is suggested, the threat of cholera stimulated interest and activity in the name of the public health, particularly through sanitary initiatives. The scare contributed to the formation of local associations, connected in a network that would later issue in an attempt at national sanitary investigation. The deputy minister of agriculture, Joseph-Charles Tache, recently engaged to reform the statistical apparatus of government, in alliance with other activists, attempted to invest the domain of public health in forms that would make it into an object of intervention.
