Dr John Snow Research Paper

Doctor John Snow

The Father of Epidemiology. To earn a nickname like this, innovative work must be achieved from such a man. Doctor John Snow was a man who cautiously researched and came up with noteworthy insight on cholera. Cholera was said to be airborne during the mid 19th century and there were no successful treatments to help save the generous amount of people dying from dehydration. John Snow was born in Britain on March 15th, 1816 and became an apprentice to a surgeon at the age of fourteen years old (BBC, 2006). The 1831 cholera outbreak happened when Snow was eighteen years old this is what sparked Snow’s interest in cholera. In 1844 he graduated from the University of London and was a physician by the year 1850 (Anderson,
“He tested the effects of controlled doses of either and chloroform on animals and on humans, he made those drugs safer and more effective (BBC, 2006).” After making such drugs more secure he presented Queen Victoria the option of using chloroform to help with the birth of both her children, Leopold and Beatrice, she gladly accepted. In 1848 another cholera outbreak had started and Doctor Snow was busier than ever examining ill patients, which got him thinking more in depth about the causes of this disease. This outbreak would kill nearly 600 people. After a single year of looking further into cholera he had arrived at a variety of conclusions. John Snow knew cholera was not passed through the air like everyone had originally thought, but it was transmitted through ingestion, eating or drinking. Also he realized the outbreaks were caused by pollution in their water supplies because cholera was some sort of bacterium (Anderson, 2003). With these conclusions he decided to produce a self-published brochure, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, it was nearly forty pages long of him explaining his argument and backing it up with quality evidence. After it was out many colleagues thought Snow was crazy and disagreed with his recently written