John Snow is one of those Victorians who ought to be revered, and it's interesting to note that several books about him have appeared in recent years. He both pioneered anaesthetics (chloroforming Queen Victoria during childbirth) and was amongst the first to suggest that cholera was not caught by 'miasma' (foul vapour) but transmitted by drinking polluted water - famously, in the case of the Broad Street pump in Soho, where brewers, drinking beer exclusively, were shown to be free of contagion.Anyway, a reader points me to this site, a companion piece to Cholera, Chloroform, and the Science of Medicine: A Life of John Snow (Oxford University Press, 2003) which is packed full of all things Snow - well worth a look.
See also my earlier post, here.
