John Snow

Name: Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854
Author: John Snow

Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854

Summary

“Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854”, is a work by John Snow. It explores elements such as subdistrict, Vauxhall Company and the Lambeth Company.

Quotes from Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854 (John Snow)

John Snow, Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854

“ After commencing the inquiry I found that the circumstances were calculated for affording even more conclusive evidence than I had anticipated. The pipes of the two water companies not only passed down all the streets, but into nearly all the courts and alleys. A single house often had a different supply from that on either side. Each water company supplied alike both rich and poor, and thus there was a population of 300,000 persons, of various conditions and occupations, intimately mixed together, and divided into two groups by no other circumstance than the difference of water supply. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

John Snow, Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854

“ It is hardly necessary to remark, that every circumstance which proves the communication of cholera through the medium of water, corroborates the views, explained at the beginning of this paper, regarding its propagation in the crowded houses of the poor; for it cannot be supposed that a morbid matter, which can produce its specific effects after being diffused and distributed through a quantity of water, could fail to act in an undiluted state. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

John Snow, Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854

“ The mining districts of this country have suffered excessively from cholera in each epidemic, an event which might be explained by the following circumstances when taken in connexion with the above view of the cause of the disease. The miners stay eight or nine hours at a time in the pits, and take food with them, which they eat invariably with unwashed hands, and without knife and fork, whilst the pits are without privies, and are generally extremely foul and dirty. The entire absence of daylight must also cause the workmen to take much more dirt with their food than they are aware of. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

John Snow, Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854

“ In the cases in which the cholera poison gains access to a limited supply of drinking water, such as a tank or pumpwell, the outbreak it occasions is always sudden, violent, and limited; but when a river is the medium of the propagation of the disease, its progress is more gradual and extended, being diffused amongst the whole population using the water. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

John Snow, Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854

“ In the fifth table the numbers in the previous ones are added together, and fresh calculations made, so as to show the result of the inquiry for the whole epidemic. The instances in which the water supply was not specified, or not ascertained, in the returns made by the district registrars must evidently nearly all have been cases in which the house was supplied by one or other of the water companies, for, if the persons received no such supply, and obtained water from a pump well, canal, or ditch, there could be no difficulty in knowing the fact. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

John Snow, Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854

“ The fourth table contains the results of that part of the inquiry made by Dr. Farr, when compared with the population supplied by each water company respectively. It is necessarily arranged in districts—for the results were so published in the Weekly Returns [7] —and not in subdistricts. The mortality during the last ten weeks of the epidemic was greater than during the first seven weeks, but the reader will observe that a very great disproportion continues in every district between the mortality of the population supplied by one company and that supplied by the other. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

John Snow, Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854

“ In the first place, throughout the greater part of Lambeth, Newington, and the Borough, the houses are either without numbers, or numbered very irregularly, and the numbers are liable to frequent change, as new houses are built, or older ones repainted; there are also frequently repetitions of the same number in the same street, and although, in some instances, the companies have returned the names of the occupiers, that can be of no assistance in the case of the poor, who occupy but one or two rooms, and form the greater bulk of the population. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

John Snow, Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854

“ The social visitor who came to see the poor patient, or attend his funeral, frequently suffered, whilst the medical man, and others who partook of no food in the apartment, and who washed their hands when requisite, escaped. ”

John Snow

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Quotes from Cholera and the Water Supply in the South Districts of London in 1854 (John Snow)

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