In August 1849 Snow published a paper entitled " On the Mode of Communication of Cholera" in which he presented his theory that the disease was acquired by ingestion of contaminated water, but his theory did not get much traction with the medical establishment.
In fact, cholera is caused by the bacterium, Vibrio cholera, which is transmitted by the fecal-oral route, that is by ingestion of water or food that is contaminated with sewage. Snow reasoned that, if cholera was spread by bad air, it should cause pulmonary symptoms, but since the symptoms were gastrointestinal, perhaps it was transmitted by water or food consumption. The prevailing opinion was that cholera was spread either by miasmas or by person-to-person contact, Snow began examining the victims and found that their initial symptoms were always related to the gastrointestinal tract. Another large epidemic occurred in 1848 and lasted through 1849.
The first cholera epidemic in London struck in 1831, when Snow was still an apprentice. He is most often credited with solving an outbreak of cholera that occurred in London in 1854 (the outbreak is described below), but his studies of cholera were much more extensive than that. John Snow (shown below) was a physician in London who spent several decades studying cholera in a systematic way. In the 1800s there were large epidemics of cholera in Europe and America that killed thousands of people. Health officials discuss an outbreak of cholera spreading through rural Haiti. The next video describes the cholera epidemic in Haiti in 2010. You Tube video of Steven Johson discussing The Ghost Map.Ĭholera continues to be a problem throughout the world today (see Cholera in Haiti). The story has been elegantly told in The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, who describes the conditions in London in the 1800s situation in the brief video below. Cholera is an infectious disease that became a major threat to health during the 1800s.
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