John
Snow
(March 15, 1813 – June 16, 1858) was an English physician during
the mid 19th
century. He is best known for tracing the source of a cholera
outbreak in Soho, London in 1854. He is considered by many to be one
of the fathers of modern epidemiology and is also known as a
trailblazer in the use of anesthesia.
Born
in York, England, he grew up with eight siblings in a very poor
neighborhood. He graduated from the University of London in December
1844. By 1850, he had been admitted to the Royal College of
Physicians and had become a founding member of the Epidemiological
Society of London.
Snow's
groundbreaking work in the area of anesthetics, specifically ether
and chloroform, allowed patients to undergo procedures without the
pain that had previously been an unavoidable part of surgery and
other procedures. His personal administration of chloroform to Queen
Victrola when she gave birth to the last two of her nine children led
to greater public acceptance of anesthesia.
The
dominant theory behind the cause of cholera outbreaks before Snow's
breakthrough was the miasma
theory,
which stated that diseases such as these were simply caused by “bad
air,” as the germ
theory of disease
had not yet become a thought. Although Snow did not quite understand
how the disease was transmitted, he began noting a link between the
water supply and spread of disease. He first published this theory in
1949 in an essay titled On the
Mode of Communication of Cholera.
The
infamous Broad Street cholera outbreak occurred in 1954 in the Soho
district of London. With the help of local residents, Snow was able
to identify the source of the outbreak as a public water pump on
Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Even lacking sufficient hard
evidence, he was able to persuade the local council to disable the
well pump by removing the handle because of the constant link between
disease and this water source that he had identified. This study by
Snow resulting from his observations is considered a founding event
in public health and the science of epidemiology.
Later
discoveries revealed that this public well was dug a mere three feet
from an old cesspit which was leaking fecal bacteria.
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