Pandemics in Chicago-- Part 5: Almost a Lethal Mistake

Before the advent of antibiotics, brandy was a common treatment for cholera.  "Most of the medicines given really only functioned as sedatives,"  Selzer said.

"In one case in 1866 it worked too well -- a patient was knocked out so thoroughly that the family thought he was dead and called for the undertaker.  The coffin arrived just as he woke up.  The same may have happened when Philo Carpenter, Illinois' first pharmacist, was digging graves for victims of the epidemic, one of the men he was about to bury stirred back to life."

--Cooter