From Leeches to Slug Glue by Roopa Pai

Author:Roopa Pai [Pai, Roopa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353056575
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2019-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

It was during the second cholera pandemic, which lasted from 1826 to 1837, that John Snow encountered the disease for the first time, in the coal-mining village of Killingworth. It was 1832, and he was only nineteen then, and a surgeon’s apprentice, but he treated many sufferers and got to observe the progress and spread of the disease at close range. It led to his lifelong interest in epidemics—not just cholera but the plague as well. When the Epidemiological Society of London was founded in May 1850, no one was surprised to note that Snow was one of its founding members.

On 31 August 1854, cholera came to the Soho neighbourhood of London as part of the third cholera pandemic (it had already visited the city once in 1848 as part of the same pandemic, and claimed over 14,000 victims). Over the next three days, well over a hundred people had died, causing three-quarters of the residents to flee the neighbourhood, away from the ‘bad air’. By 10 September, over 500 Soho residents had fallen victim to the killer disease.

Many of the sick from Soho were taken to the nearby Middlesex Hospital, where their treatment was supervised by a thirty-four-year-old nurse called Florence Nightingale (Yesss! The famous one!). She was actually employed as superintendent in a different hospital, but had come over to Middlesex Hospital in early September to help out with the epidemic. You can read more about the Lady with the Lamp and her contributions to nursing in Idea 16 on page 153.

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