“On the Mode of Communication of Cholera” - John Snow - 1854 (Annie Gustafson)
Image 8 of 8 | e222 | i40320 | 20124x18877px
“On the Mode of Communication of Cholera” - John Snow - 1854 (Annie Gustafson)
A short history of John Snow’s famous cholera map. Source: perplexity
John Snow was an English physician whose pioneering research in the 1850s helped establish the field of epidemiology and transformed public health. At a time when most people believed cholera was spread by “miasma”—foul air—Snow hypothesized that contaminated water was the true culprit. During a deadly cholera outbreak in London’s Soho district in September 1854, Snow meticulously recorded the locations of cholera deaths and plotted them on a map, revealing a clustering around the Broad Street water pump.pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih+4
Snow’s map used stacked bars to indicate cholera deaths at each address, highlighting the concentration of cases among those who drank water from the Broad Street pump. He also discovered that brewery workers and residents of a nearby workhouse, who consumed water from other sources, escaped the epidemic almost entirely. Snow convinced authorities to remove the pump handle, leading to a rapid decline in new cases.wikipedia+4
This ground-breaking visualization not only supported Snow’s waterborne theory but also demonstrated the crucial role of spatial analysis and data mapping in disease control. His work laid foundations for modern epidemiology, public health interventions, and the use of maps as analytical tools in medicine.scienceline+2
Q - Can mapping deaths and water pumps provide evidence to support the miasma or germ theory of cholera spread?
L - Plot residences of the recently deceased on the same map as the locations of water pumps.
S - Snow tracked information from hospitals and public records to plot deaths and residences.
E - Inevitable estimation in any hand-drawn map, trust that data is accurate.
D - Hand-drawn–labels roads, water pumps, and deaths (via hash marks) because locations, water sources, and deaths are relevant to answering the question.
I - One and done.
Voronoi diagram of the map, courtesy of John Jungck:
“On the Mode of Communication of Cholera” - John Snow - 1854 (Annie Gustafson)
A short history of John Snow’s famous cholera map. Source: perplexity
John Snow was an English physician whose pioneering research in the 1850s helped establish the field of epidemiology and transformed public health. At a time when most people believed cholera was spread by “miasma”—foul air—Snow hypothesized that contaminated water was the true culprit. During a deadly cholera outbreak in London’s Soho district in September 1854, Snow meticulously recorded the locations of cholera deaths and plotted them on a map, revealing a clustering around the Broad Street water pump.pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih+4
Snow’s map used stacked bars to indicate cholera deaths at each address, highlighting the concentration of cases among those who drank water from the Broad Street pump. He also discovered that brewery workers and residents of a nearby workhouse, who consumed water from other sources, escaped the epidemic almost entirely. Snow convinced authorities to remove the pump handle, leading to a rapid decline in new cases.wikipedia+4
This ground-breaking visualization not only supported Snow’s waterborne theory but also demonstrated the crucial role of spatial analysis and data mapping in disease control. His work laid foundations for modern epidemiology, public health interventions, and the use of maps as analytical tools in medicine.scienceline+2
Q - Can mapping deaths and water pumps provide evidence to support the miasma or germ theory of cholera spread?
L - Plot residences of the recently deceased on the same map as the locations of water pumps.
S - Snow tracked information from hospitals and public records to plot deaths and residences.
E - Inevitable estimation in any hand-drawn map, trust that data is accurate.
D - Hand-drawn–labels roads, water pumps, and deaths (via hash marks) because locations, water sources, and deaths are relevant to answering the question.
I - One and done.
Voronoi diagram of the map, courtesy of John Jungck:
i40321
i40322