This is a medical and social history of Italy's largest city during the cholera epidemics of 1884 and 1910-11. It explores the factors that exposed Naples to risk; it examines such popular responses as social hysteria, riots, and religiosity; and it traces therapeutic strategies. This book is the first extended study of cholera in modern Italy; it sets Naples in a comparative international framework and relates the disease to larger historical issues, such as the nature of liberal statecraft, the "southern question," mass emigration, organized crime, and the medical profession.