As the cholera continues to spread we are introduced to a doctor named John Snow. Snow is a man that discovered one of the first anesthetics: ether. The cholera epidemic intrigued him so he decided to try to find out what exactly was causing the spread once and for all. At the time, it was widely accepted that the desease was being spread through the air, not by bacteria like most of us would think but rather, but rather by the bad smell of the cities.
The problem that Snow had with this was that it were caused by smell and was in the air, then that wouldn’t explain why it affected some areas but completely skipped over other parts. There really wasn’t an even spread of the disease like there would have been if it were truly being spread through the air. This lead to further investigation which lead Snow to believe that it was actually caused by contaminated water that people were drinking.
I think this might have been the era where the term “Don’t shit where you eat” may have come from, because workers in this time did just that. Most of us would gag at the thought of actually doing that, but this was common place for people back then. It really isn’t much of a surprise that the disease broke out.
