English physician regarded as a founder of modern epidemiology. During the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak in London's Soho district, Snow mapped cases and traced them to a single water pump, arguing that cholera spread through contaminated water rather than bad air (the then-dominant miasma theory), and famously had the pump handle removed. His method, systematic mapping and statistical reasoning applied to disease spread, predates confirmation of the causative bacterium by decades and established a template for tracing infectious disease to its source. He was also a pioneer of anesthesia, administering chloroform to Queen Victoria during childbirth in 1853 and 1857.
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Cholera, Conditions Snow traced cholera transmission to contaminated water in 1854, before the specific causative bacterium was confirmed by Pacini (1854, largely unnoticed) or Koch (1883).
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