John Snow, Asiatic Cholera and the inductive-deductive method - republished
Lecture 10: Confronting objections to Snow’s theory
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Last week, we discussed Snow’s investigation of local outbreaks in South London. In today’s post, we will discuss the contemporary objections to Snow’s theory and how he dealt with them. On Thursday, we will start on the famous Broad Street outbreak.
Towards the end of On the Mode of Communication of Cholera. 2nd edition (MCC2) Snow tackles some objections to his waterborne theory.
First, some of Snow’s critics remarked that there were several fatal cases of people coming from the country into London. These cases could not be reconciled with contaminated water exposure in London. Snow investigated these cases and found that upon arriving in the Southern Districts, these fatalities had been exposed to water from the Southwark and Vauxhall Company. He mentioned that all these cases manifested symptoms of …
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