The Broad Street pump revisited.

The Broad Street pump revisited: dairy farms and an ongoing outbreak of inflammatory bowel disease in Forest, Virginia

We report an ongoing outbreak of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease in Forest, Virginia involving 15 unrelated children and teenagers who resided in close proximity to dairy farms. Some of our cases demonstrated serologic evidence of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis infection, suggesting its potential role as an etiologic agent.

Pioneers in infection control: John Snow, Henry Whitehead, the Broad Street pump, and the beginnings of geographical epidemiology.

John Snow was one of the founders of epidemiology. Already convinced of the value of pure water, he analysed the distribution of cholera cases in the 1848 epidemic in relation to the purity of the water supply in London. His hypothesis that cholera was spread by contaminated water was tested by the 'Broad Street' epidemic of 1854. Snow quickly traced the water used in the houses affected by cho...

The Broad Street Pump

Remarks on the Outbreak of Cholera in Broad Street, Golden Square, London, in 1854

It is commonly supposed, and sometimes asserted even at meetings of Medical Societies, that the Broad Street outbreak of cholera in 1854 was arrested in mid-career by the closing of the pump in that street. That this is a mistake is sufficiently shown by the following table, which, though incomplete, proves that the outbreak had already reached its climax, and had been steadily on the decline f...

Preventing occupational cancer.

The classic episode in the history of disease prevention occurred in London in 1854 (1). There was an epidemic of cholera in the neighborhood around Broad Street. John Snow, the hero of the story, studied the habits of the victims and found that almost all obtained their water from the well on Broad Street. Swift action was taken; the pump was closed down and the epidemic rapidly subsided. This...