Some Notable Epidemics

“EPIDEMIOLOGY, after making slow but steady progress for a century or more in Great Britain, as the outcome of the work of the disciples of Sydenhamthe so-called ‘Annalists’ sustained a severe setback when the Industrial Revolution, with its crowding and neglect of sanitation, facilitated the spread of disease. Dr. John Snow's investigations into the cholera of 1848-49 may thus be said to have inaugurated a new era, making water-borne infection an established reality, and this stimulus, following upon the work of Mead, Pringle, Lind, Baker, Blane, Jenner, Thackrah and the three reports of the Poor Law Commissioners of 1838-39, greatly strengthened the hands of Chadwick and Simon in producing the health crusade of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Almost inevitably, therefore, Dr. Scott's Chapter i commences with an account of the “Broad St. Pump Outbreak” (1854).