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Graduate Summer Session Home > John Snow Pub |
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Graduate Summer Session in EpidemiologyJohn Snow Pub
Snow was also a pioneer anesthesiologist. He helped introduce chloroform and ether anesthesia into Britain, wrote papers on their use, invented a mask for their administration, and delivered two of Queen Victoria's children using chloroform anesthesia. He was elected President of the Medical Society of London in 1855. At the former location of his home on Frith Street, Soho, London, the Association of Anesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland have erected a plaque which states, "Dr. John Snow, 1813-1858, Pioneer Anesthetist and Epidemiologist lived in a house at this site." Researched
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The
sketch to the left depicts the John Snow Pub on Broadwick Street
(formerly Broad Street), London, in honor of Dr. John Snow, a pioneer
English epidemiologist (1813-1858). A plaque outside the pub reads,
"This red granite kerbstone marks the site of the historic Broad Street Pump associated with Dr. John Snow's discovery
in 1854 that cholera is conveyed by water." Actually, the concept
had first been proposed by him in 1849. Upstairs in the pub there
is a picture of Snow and a description of his studies of the cholera
outbreak at the Broad Street Pump. In this, he demonstrated by case-control
methods that persons who drank the well water had a much higher
death rate from cholera than those who did not. Furthermore, a bottle
of water from the pump carried to a widow living in an area where
no cholera existed infected both her and her daughter. Snow also
showed in a retrospective cohort study of households receiving water
from one of two competitive companies that the cholera death rate
was much higher in those drinking water from a source on the Thames
River polluted by sewage, 315 deaths per 10,000 houses served by
the Southwark Vauxhall water company, than those drinking water
derived from above this point, namely 37 deaths per 10,000 houses
of the Lambeth water company. On the basis of those observations,
Snow recommended specific preventative practices, such as taking
the handle off the pump and introducing a purer water supply. These
successful measures were carried out some 40 years before the true
bacterial cause of cholera was discovered. 
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