John Snow Cholera Disease

Introduction

Cholera is an infectious disease that became a major threat to health during the 1800s. In the nineteenth century, there were extensive epidemics of cholera in Europe and America that killed thousands of people. In those times, the predominant theory behind disease transmission was the called Miasma theory; which suggested that diseases were spread through the bad air. In other words, particles from decomposed matter would become part of the air, and this dirty air spread the diseases. It was an elegant, but incorrect theory and its debunking took place when it was discovered that cholera was spread through a bacterium (Vibrio cholerae) in water. There is where John Snow play his essential roll in the history of epidemiology (Boston University School of Public Health, 2015).

John Snow, one of the Fathers of Modern Epidemiology

John Snow, born in 1813 in York, England. He was an English doctor and a leader in the adoption of medical hygiene and anesthesia. He is remembered as a father of the epidemiology, in part, due to his work in tracing the origin of the cholera outbreak in Soho, London, in 1854. John Snow spent several decades systematically studying cholera disease. And his

Snow began examining the infected people and found that their initial symptoms were always related to the gastrointestinal tract. Then, Snow reasoned that, if cholera was spread by the bad air, defended by the prevailing Miasma theory, it should be causing pulmonary symptoms, instead. Therefore, due to the signs and symptoms were gastrointestinal, possibly it was transmitted by the consumption of water or food. In fact, cholera is spread by the fecal-oral route, been caused by the bacterium, Vibrio cholera, present in water or food contaminated with sewage (Boston University School of Public Health,