John Snow and the cholera outbreak of 1854 with Mike Jay | Medical London

this is one of the most famous landmarks in London medical history this pump right here on Broadwick Street in Soho which in 1854 was Broad Street in the middle of the slums and rookeries which constituted Soho at that time and on the 8th of September 1854 on the instructions of the dr. Jon Snow the handle to this pump was removed so that water could no longer be drawn from it because snow had recognized that this pump the water from this pump was the source of the outbreak of cholera that had been ravaging Soho killing over 500 people in previous weeks Colorado first arrived in London in 1831 and had swept across from Asia it was absolutely terrifying disease very very rapid in its progress very indiscriminate in who it attacked and cholera epidemics were brief but extremely intense cholera was a horrifying disease with incredibly rapid onset the first thing he knew about it was terrible stomach cramps and diarrhea and then you quite often die often the same day just in a pool of her own stinking excrement the prevailing theory at the time was that filth diseases like cholera as they were called infectious and contagious diseases were spread by a general miasma a general pollution of the atmosphere which might sort of be emanate from the ground or be part of the air or you know be spread in any number of ways people try and protect themselves against them by inhaling sweet scented things and so on this was actually the framework within which Jon Snow himself was working it would be another generation before Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch and the idea that these diseases were actually spread by germs and bacteria so snow still believed that cholera was being communicated by a miasma but he believed that the miasma was particularly concentrated in the water supply to this legendary moment is commemorated not only by this pump here but also by pub the John Snow so this is the John Snow it's full of John snow memorabilia and it even has a part of the legendary pump handle that was removed it was only renamed to Jon Snow quite recently and it's a symbol I guess in that sense of how you know the legend of John snows story has grown with the years and as is often the case with medical and scientific breakthroughs the story that's accreted around it isn't quite you know not nothing as quite as it seems and nothing is quite the way it was the site of the pump for example it's not actually the site of the pump the pump was actually over here much Kosan the pub a few yards down the road the version of the John snows story that we hear these days is that by removing the handle from the Broad Street pump he saved countless lives in the middle of a cholera epidemic that by identifying the water in the pump as the cause of contagion he moved away from traditional theories of sort of miasma and kind of general pollution and towards modern theories of germs and bacteria and infection and finally that it was Jon Snow's work in this that became the main impetus for the extraordinary revolution in London's sanitation that would happen in the next decade with Joseph's puzzle Jets enormous projects to remodel London's sewers what was really original about Jon Snow's work what was really groundbreaking was the statistical method behind it he started plotting the locations of all the deaths in the cholera epidemic and he discovered that they all clustered around water pumps and particularly around this pump in Broad Street he then investigated the people living in these slums around Broad Street and found that the people who were least affected with the brewery workers because they were drinking beer rather than water so John snows statistical work was groundbreaking but actually this great moment when the pumphandle was taken off the pump had very little effect it was largely symbolic because by the time he'd managed to persuade the parish to remove the pump handle the cholera epidemic had pretty much burnt itself out anyway so it's unlikely that he saved any lives and also the idea which is frequently now attached to his story that this was a pivotal moment in the campaign to revolutionized London sanitation is also unfortunately not true snows report when he finally produced it and gathered very little attention at the time but Jon Snow's work as would be recognized with hindsight was a very important contribution to a public health movement that had been building in London since cholera arrived in the early 1830s so the real significance of John snows story is that it's the birth of Epidemiology it's the birth of statistical analysis and it shows how many lives you can save and how much you can improve conditions with the proper statistical surveys but of course this is something we recognize clearly now that wasn't recognized at the time so Jon Snow although he went on and made other pioneering medical discoveries never really lived to see his work on the Broad Street pump come to any sort of practical fruition but then on the other hand he did achieve the great accolade that Londoners give to their own which is to have a pub named after him

Channel: Wellcome Collection

Views: 176,119

Rating: 4.7928286 out of 5

Keywords: Medical, London, book, medicine, Mike, Jay, John, Snow, soho, cholera, outbreak, 1854, strange, attractor, wellcome, collection, walks

Id: Pq32LB8j2K8

Length: 6min 13sec (373 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 11 2008