Today, if you are not living the London or in the United Kingdom, there is a possibility that you would mention London as a possible destination for vacation or start a new beginning, you could also mention it as a place to study. While London has changed over the years, this wasn't how it used to be in the 19th century and during the industrial revolution.
Although it was the capital of the largest empire at the time, it was also a place with filth on the street, smug in air, and sewage in rivers like the Thames river. The river Thames smelt so bad that a day in 1858 the river smelt so bad that people had to evacuate their homes, and it was referred to as the great stink. The Thames river was the same place where bottle water factories got their water and sell to people in London.
So there was a situation in London which led to a pandemic and that is something I will be discussing in this post and that pandemic is Cholera. According the CDC, cholera is an acute diarrheal illness of the intestine caused by the bacteria Vibrio cholerae with the serogroup 01 (0139). The CDC estimates that about 2.9 million cases of Cholera is recorded and it leads to the death of over 95 thousand people annually.
Cholera is usually mild but then it can become severe and in the severe cases, it can be fatal within hours as it causes infected people to become dehydrated as a result of uncontrollable evacuation of their bodily fluid and people can be treated through re-hydration using mixture that has a combination f water, sugar, and electrolytes such as the New Oral Rehydration Solution.
Unlike our modern world, people who lived in the early 19th century believed that being diseased was as a result of Miasma. With miasma, it was believed that disease was caused by unpleasant atmosphere emanating from something such as filth and decay. Although germ theory existed in the 1600s, people still believed in the Miasma theorem.
Doctor John Snow was a breath of relief to London. He was born in March 15, 1813 in York, England. He left school at age 14 to pursue three separate medical apprenticeship. He became an anaesthesiologist, and was used by Queen Victoria herself for the administration of Chloroform during the birth of Prince Leopold and Princess Beatrice.
He followed germ theory instead of Miasma and was the co-founder of London Epidemiological society in 1850 and this led him to release a paper which sited contaminated water as the source of cholera but people didn't really check it out until 1854 when there was cholera in Soho which claimed the lives of many including over 500 people in Broad street.
He was able to explain that the water was associated with a company supplying water to a particular region, as well as a hand pump in the vicinity. While people in the community were dying as a result of cholera outbreak, people in a brewery in the street didn't fall ill. It was evident that people who died from the cholera were known to fetch water from the pump on Broad street . He was able to prove that Miasma wasn't the cause of cholera rather it was waste water. He removed the pump's handle of the broad street pump so others would not collect water from the pump.
While people in the area were falling ill as a result of the contaminated water, people who worked at the brewery didn't fall ill because they were taking bear and not the water from the pump. The cause of the Cholera outbreak was identified by Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead as they were able to find out about how the people got the disease. At the end, it was realized that the patient zero was an infant who had died of cholera. Her mother confirmed that she had been washing the baby diaper and dumping the dirt water into a cesspit in front of the pump.
Read More
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/12/392332431
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Londons-Great-Stink/
https://www.cdc.gov/cholera/general/index.html
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/miasma-theory
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cholera
https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Snow-British-physician
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html
Image Reference
Image 1 || Wikimedia Commons || Patients suffering from cholera in the Jura during the 1854
Image 2 || Wikimedia Commons ||Vibrio cholerae on MacConkey agar of Cholera patient stool culture
