History of medicine

Cholera was a major global scourge in the 19th century, with frequent large-scale epidemics in European cities primarily originating in the Indian subcontinent. John Snow, a British physician, was the personal anaesthetist to Queen Victoria and a founding member of the London Epidemiological Society. John Snow conducted pioneering investigations on the cholera epidemic primarily in the Soho area adjacent to Broad Street, Soho, London between August to September 1854. He investigated the water supply systems in London homes and concluded that the infection rate among people drawing contaminated water far exceeded the rates among those whose water intake was from another section of the river, which was uncontaminated. Snow concluded that access to uncontaminated water prevented them from cholera infection, while users of the Broad Street pump became infected. He persuaded the doubtful civic authorities to remove the handle from the Broad Street pump, and the epidemic disappeared within a few days. This demonstration reinforced the goals of the sanitation movement, which developed sewage drainage systems and water purification systems in cities and towns in the following decades, thereby vastly reducing the threats of cholera, typhoid and many other waterborne diseases. Today, John Snow is considered a founding father of modern epidemiology for his pioneering work.