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Dr John Snow & Rev. Henry Whitehead

60 second histories

This video covers:  John Snow’s collaboration with the Reverend Henry Whitehead.

Let me tell you about the Reverend Henry Whitehead, the Vicar of Saint Luke’s Church in Soho. He believed that he could prove my hypothesis about the Broad Street cholera outbreak wrong. He reasoned that cholera was a visitation of the vengeance of God and that there must be some manner in which to alleviate God’s anger and in turn stop the disease. He began to investigate the cholera deaths himself but found he could not prove me wrong and so began a collaboration, which led us to investigate the death of Frances Lewis. Frances was a five-month-old baby, the daughter of police constable Thomas Lewis and his wife Sarah. They lived at number forty Broad Street just opposite the water pump. Frances had died at the beginning of the outbreak but she had contracted the disease a week before. We learned that her mother had washed the baby’s soiled clothes and tipped the contaminated water into the cesspool in front of her house. It was later discovered that this cesspool was leaking into the water pump supply. We had found the cause of the outbreak.
Eras: 
Medicine & Health
Victorian Reformers
Victorian
Topics: 
Key people
Victorian Reformers
Medicine & health
Character: 
Dr John Snow
Key words: 
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