The crisp opening graph of Nathaniel Rich’s New York Times Magazine description of the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, which I somehow have never visited on my trips to that city:

“Before New Orleans was called the Big Easy, it was known as the Wet Grave. The nickname referred both to the inundation of coffins when buried in the swampy ground, and to New Orleans’s standing during the 19th century as the nation’s filthiest, deadliest city. The cholera epidemic of 1832 killed more than 4,000 people in three weeks; it returned the next year to claim another thousand. The 1853 yellow-fever outbreak is among the deadliest epidemics ever to hit an American city; some 8,000 perished that summer alone. Diphtheria, typhoid and malaria were constant companions. It is therefore not surprising that America’s first licensed apothecary shop was established here in 1823, at 514 Chartres Street, blocks from America’s oldest pub.“