First track and trace system invented by Victorian doctor
BACK IN May before the NHS Test and Trace had begun, I talked about Dr John Snow, a Victorian surgeon and general practitioner working in London’s Soho district who is regarded as one of the founders of epidemiology.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic started everyone has become familiar with the science of epidemiology, modelling, statistics and the R number. Our Test and Trace owes much to Dr John Snow.
In the 19th century the enteric fevers affected huge numbers of people, leading to many theories as to how they were caused. The most popular was the ‘miasma theory’ which postulated that the fevers were caused by foul dampness arising from decaying organic matter.
In 1854 Soho was hit by one of the periodic cholera epidemics. Dr Snow took to the streets and charted on a map each and every case that resulted in a death. He found that within 250 yards of the spot where Cambridge Street joins Broad Street there were 500 fatal attacks of cholera in 10 days.
By contact tracing he showed that the majority of cases had consumed water from the Broad Street pump. He concluded that contaminated water was causing the epidemic.
When the handle of the Broad Street pump was removed the number of cases dwindled and stopped.
Last year, I attended a conference at the Royal College of Physicians in London and paid a visit to the medical museum there. It has many very fine sets of antique instruments and various medicine chests, including the anaesthetic set owned by Dr John Snow, who used chloroform on Queen Victoria when she gave birth to her last two children.
Dr Snow was an early pioneer in anaesthetics. He was one of the first doctors to calculate the doses of ether and chloroform needed to induce successful anaesthesia in both surgery and obstetrics.
He actually designed one of the early anaesthetic masks for administering chloroform and wrote an influential paper on ether in 1847. A longer work on anaesthetics, considered a classic of medicine was published posthumously in 1858.
During this pandemic I have been reflecting on some of the remarkable medical practitioners of the past, and their innovations which have influenced medical practice. Dr John Snow was certainly one of that august group.