aug 25, 1854 - John Snow

Description:

Snow was already sceptical of the miasma theory of disease, and he believed that sewage dumped into rivers and cesspools near town wells could contaminate water supplies and cause cholera outbreaks. As a doctor working in Soho, he started to investigate the 1854 outbreak immediately, in an attempt to prove his theory.

Snow began by talking to local residents and quickly started to suspect that the source if the outbreak was the public water pump on Broad Street. He used information from local Hospital and public records and specifically asked residents if they had drunk water from the pump. Using this information he went on to create a dot map to illustrate the cluster of cases around the pump.

Snow also interviewed a woman who was reported to 'like the taste of the water' from broad street she also was burdened with the disease and contracted cholera as a result.

On the 7th September 1854, Snow took his findings to local officials and convinced them to take the handle off the pump, making it impossible to draw water from it. Shortly after this action, the outbreak came to an end, and the pump handle was promptly replaced.

Eventually they found that the pump was taking water that was near a leaking cesspit and in the cesspit was a baby's cloth nappy. The baby had had cholera and so the bacterium grew in these good surroundings.

'Vibrio cholera' = Cholera

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