John White, who is known as the “Father of Epidemiology”,
was born in 1813 on March 15. His father was a coal miner and his mom stayed at
home. In his early school days his parents realized he was bright and decided
to send him to a private school. When he was 14 he started working with a surgeon
by the name of Dr. William Hardcastle as an apprentice. He graduated from the University
of London in 1844 at the age of 31. While Snow was in his fourth year as an
apprentice, an epidemic had struck London. The disease, cholera, was rapidly
spreading and killing hundreds of thousands wherever it went. The symptoms of
cholera are diarrhea, leg cramps, and vomiting. It originated in Asia, but
around 1821 started spreading to European countries. Snow’s mentor had a lot of
sick patients and got overwhelmed, so he sent Snow out to help take care of
people who couldn’t make it to him. Although he had been training for a few
years already, there wasn’t much he could do to counter the symptoms because
none of the medicines worked. He worked with patients for 11 years and the
frequency of the disease went away. He then focused on getting his Master’s
degree in London. John Snow’s big break was when he discovered a controlled way
to distribute anesthetics to patients. He tested small doses on animals and
also on humans. Before Snow, doctors would use rags soaked in chloroform which
wasn’t the most effective way to subdue patients’. Snow then began to study the
nature of cholera and find an explanation on why and how it spread so quickly.
He believed it was from the germs, but most scientists at the time believed it
came from sewers and garbage pits. He believed the water was contaminated and
he had to figure out a way to prove it. During the next cholera outbreak, he
found out who was the person to be reported to have it, then discovered the
second person that had it stayed in the same hotel room as the first and this
helped give him the support for his claims. As he talked to more patients, he discovered
that most of the symptoms started out as digestive issues which means the
disease came from food or water ingested by those people. This was even more
support for his claim and took away credit from the others since they believed
the disease was airborne. If it was airborne, the first symptoms would have
been in the lungs or in the breathing orifices. He spread his findings by
holding lectures. He worked on this theory for the rest of his life and
eventually had enough proof to convince the other scientists that this was how
the epidemic started.
