In the mid-1800s, London physician John Snow made a startling observation that would change the way that we view diseases and how they propagate. He created a map depicting where cases of cholera occurred in London’s West End and found them to be clustered around a water pump on Broad Street. This led him to believe that cholera was a waterborne disease, a conclusion that went against the Victorian “miasma theory” in which Londoners ascribed the source of cholera to bad airs or vapors entering the human body John Snow’s conviction about the source for the London outbreak and his concern for public health compelled him to oppose the popular beliefs of his time and convince the local council in London’s West End to disable the water pump on Broad Street.

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