ABSTRACT
The cholera epidemic of 1831 started in Sunderland and spread throughout the Northeast of England. William Hardcastle, as a prominent doctor in the area, was key in the medical treatment of the people in his and neighbouring parishes and at his side was John Snow. Snow’s first published report was on ‘Asphyxia and on the resuscitation of newborn children’ in 1841, but his works spanned a range of subjects from capillary circulation to scarlet fever. Snow’s scientific curiosity led him to doubt the prevailing opinions on the transmission of cholera; he questioned why a disease supposedly spread by foul air would cause only gastrointestinal symptoms, deducing that it must instead be spread by contaminated water. In 1849, Snow outlined his ideas in a pamphlet, On the Communication of Cholera, in which he explained his theory of the faecal-oral mode of transmission.
