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Started by Ama Mensah (@amamensah) ·

John Snow, the Broad Street pump, and the map

Snow mapped the deaths around Soho and they clustered on one pump. My favorite detail: workers at a nearby brewery mostly stayed healthy, apparently because they drank beer and the brewery had its own well.

6 sources · 52 min down the hole

How I got here

Started with
Did removing the pump handle actually stop the outbreak?
Ended at
Great Stink

The Trail

  1. “john snow cholera map 1854” (google.com)
  2. 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak (en.wikipedia.org)
  3. John Snow (en.wikipedia.org)
  4. Miasma theory (en.wikipedia.org)
  5. Henry Whitehead (priest) (en.wikipedia.org)

    set out to disprove snow and ended up backing him

  6. Great Stink (en.wikipedia.org)

    the sewers came a few years later, after the thames smelled so bad parliament couldn't ignore it

What I came away with

The handle came off when the outbreak was already declining, so the removal wasn't what ended it. Snow's comparison of households served by two different water companies was arguably the stronger evidence, and it still took years for the miasma idea to die.

Keep going