How Did One Doctor Catch an Invisible Killer?

How Did One Doctor Catch an Invisible Killer? (Alternatives: "The Doctor Who Stopped Cholera by Knocking on Doors" · "John Snow and the Broad Street Pump: What Really Happened") ===== DESCRIPTION ===== In 1854, cholera killed hundreds of people on one London street in just days, and experts blamed bad air. Doctor John Snow suspected the water. He proved it not with his famous map, which came later, but by knocking on doors and following the clues left by the people who didn't get sick: brewery workers who drank beer, a workhouse with its own well, and a widow miles away who loved the taste of one particular pump's water. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 An invisible killer 0:34 London, 1850s 1:10 Doctor John Snow 1:42 The outbreak 2:07 Door by door 3:11 Removing the handle 3:34 The truth about the famous map 3:57 The grand experiment 4:41 The doubter who found the first case 5:15 Still ignored 5:48 Snow's legacy, and cholera today 6:26 Catching a killer you can't see 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES ▸ Snow, J. (1855). On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (2nd ed.). London: John Churchill. (The investigation, the brewery, the workhouse, the widow, the daily deaths and the south London water companies.) ▸ McLeod, K. S. (2000). "Our sense of Snow: the myth of John Snow in medical geography." Social Science & Medicine 50. (Why the map didn't find the pump.) ▸ "Snow's Grand Experiment," Computational and Inferential Thinking (UC Berkeley Data 8). https://inferentialthinking.com/chapt... ▸ Smithsonian Magazine, "Cholera, John Snow and the Grand Experiment." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scienc... ▸ Cholera and the Thames, "Dr John Snow and Reverend Whitehead." https://www.choleraandthethames.co.uk... ▸ World Health Organization, Cholera fact sheet (current global estimates). ▸ Wikipedia, "1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak," "Filippo Pacini" and "Vibrio cholerae," used as an index to primary sources. A note on facts: published totals for the outbreak differ (420 or 616 deaths), so this video says "hundreds". The daily chart uses Snow's own table of fatal attacks (19 August to 12 September 1854). The street map is a simplified drawing in the style of Snow's map, and the world map shades example countries only. People are illustrated, not portraits. All illustrations are original drawings.