John Snow and the cholera problem

Unfortunately for the English, as their infrastructure floundered to catch up to their swelling population, something already had: disease. These overpopulated, polluted cities provided the perfect petri dish for an epidemic: close proximity to animals made animal-to-human disease jumps more likely, and high population density meant diseases could spread from person to person very quickly.

John Snow, a leading figure in anesthesiology at the time, was not having it. Asked to research the matter by city officials, Snow decided that he would embark on field investigations, surveying affected and non-affected residents to figure out if there was a link between them. Afterward, he created what we now know as a spot map to visualize the locations where cholera-afflicted individuals lived. He noticed a trend: those who had the disease tended to get water from the Broad Street pump. Finally, he had found a potential cause for the spread of cholera; not the air, but the sewage, which had traces of cholera patients’ waste and got filtered into the water pump for drinking.

Though it took a while to convince the city of his theory, they eventually conceded to removing the pump. Cholera cases dropped, suggesting Snow was right.

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