The story of John Snow and the broad Street pump was a great success in the public health field in relation to the modern field of epidemiology. During the 1830s and 1840s, there were several cholera outbreaks in London, and Snow became interested in finding the cause and transmission of the disease (Tuthill, 2003). Snow plotted the locations where the disease was spreading and compared it with the city dwellers that depended on two water companies. His research showed that cholera incidences were frequent in the population being served by one of the companies. In the practical sense, Snow focused on the cholera population rather than on a single patient and hence his discovery of the cholera epidemic.
In the years before Snow’s discovery, the local health specialists relied on isolation in a bid to treat diseases. This meant that communicable diseases were seen as a local problem requiring a local solution. However, Snow challenged the mono-causal approach used by introducing the multi-causation models based on multiple possible causes of the disease and the different ways the organisms spread. From this model, the nature of communicable diseases is best explained by the multi-causation disease model.
Prevention orients the focus on averting the development of diseases. Snow opted for the option of replacing the water pump rather than simply isolating the sick for treatment as a way to prevent people from drinking the contaminated water (Tuthill, 2003). This was a way to ensure that the spread of the disease was contained right from the point of origin. In addition, understanding the water-borne bacteria that caused the disease allowed Snow to develop new avenues of prevention rather than treating afflicted individuals.
Public health workers target interventions based on environmental conditions or vulnerable populations. Snow’s intervention targeted the environment by first approaching the water well providers and investigating how their water supplies were related to the spread of the diseases. Snow isolated the pump as the source of contamination after mapping cholera cases and water supplies in the area (Tuthill, 2003). This helped to prove that cholera was a waterborne disease, thus refuting the miasma hypothesis that it was spread through physical contact of patients.
References
Tuthill, K. (2003). John Snow and the Broad Street Pump: On the Trail of an Epidemic. Cricket, 1(3), 23-31. Retrieved from http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/snowcricketarticle.html
