Nineteenth Misconceptions: John Snow's Work In America

Misconceptions grew as America was evidently fearful. The United States encountered cholera against all odds and many wanted answers as to why. In an attempt to safeguard America, the Metropolitan Health Board was erected, which concluded cholera could be prevented, not through prayer but through disinfection and quarantine as John Snow suggested. John Snow said boiling drinking water, disinfecting clothes and bedding were imperative measures to be taken to ward of cholera. Physicians had tried to cure cholera but determined that it had no cure; all they could do was prevent. However, as John Snow’s work in England was a step in the right direction to help appropriate nineteenth century misconceptions of disease, the development of bacteriology
Generally accepted ideas of how cholera was contracted varied in England. Cholera was largely believed to derive from evil forces in the air. This resulted in constant sanitizing of the air to rid it of the “night air”. Some believed those who showed fear of cholera would be susceptible to it, while others believed the brave was spared. People who had bad blood would succumb to cholera’s so bleeding was practiced. Purging was encouraged to rid the body of its toxins. It was common to believe that persons of higher social standings were virtually safe from encountering the disease. The poor and weak people were collectively seen as those who would are fated to have in cholera. As misconceptions continued to be a powerful social and cultural phenomenon, it was virtually impossible to convince Englanders who were less or more prone to contract the
John Snow was unacquainted of the mechanism by which cholera was transmitted, but evidence led him to believe that it was not due to breathing bad air. John Snow and William Whitehead worked together to put an end to cholera as Englanders deserted their homes in fear, seeking after housing in neighboring districts. John Snow’s work during=g the outbreak of cholera in 1854 gave him global recognition an English physician as one of the founding fathers of modern epidemiology who traced and isolated the source the cholera bacterium, Vibrio Cholerae to the Broad Street pump in SoHo, London in 1854. John Snow identified the Lewis family as the catalyst for cholera’s threat in England, when Mrs. Lewis soaked her sick infants soiled cloth diapers in a bucket and then threw its contents near a water hole nearby her house. John Snow used a dot map and statistics to prove the connection between the source of water and cholera cases. William Whitehead worked in conjunction with Snow to refute false theories, focusing on Snow’s idea that cholera was spread through water contaminated by human waste from the Lewis infant. John Snow’s findings, along with the help of William Whitehead persuaded the Saint James parish authorities to remove the pump’s handle, disabling any future