The Medical Detective: John Snow, Cholera and the Mystery of the Broad Street Pump

by Sandra Hempel

Book Overview

In 1831, an unknown, horrifying and deadly disease from Asia swept across Continental Europe, killing millions in its path and throwing the medical profession into confusion. Cholera is a killer with little respect for class or wealth. When it arrived in Britain, its repercussions rocked Victorian England - from the filthy lanes of the Sunderland quayside and the squalid streets of Soho, to the great centres of power: the Privy Council, Whitehall...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1862079374
• ISBN13: 9781862079373
• Release Date: August 2007
• Publisher: Granta Books
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Good Book About John Snow and the Mystery of Cholera

Broad Street Pump is a good book about how the mystery of the Cholera outbreaks was solved by a determined doctor. During the 19th Century, there were 3 great pandemics that killed large numbers of people in Asia & Europe. The primary killer was cholera, a disease for which there was no known cure. One physician who sought a cure for cholera was John Snow who was a disciplined individual who suffered from the disdain of the British medical profession. Snow's research led him to the conclusion that cholera's spread was through contaminated drinking water. In Snow's "grand experiment" he identified a contaminated pump and disabled it and by doing so began the defeat of the disease in London. Snow's work also furthered the development of germ theory and helped debunk the widely held theory of spontaneous generation of diseases. This is a good book.