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John Snow, Asiatic Cholera and the inductive-deductive method - republished

John Snow, Asiatic Cholera and the inductive-deductive method - republished

Lecture 10: Confronting objections to Snow’s theory

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Carl Heneghan
Jul 16, 2024
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John Snow, Asiatic Cholera and the inductive-deductive method - republished
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The Snow series is an educational course. We hope you will recognise our efforts by donating to TTE or becoming a paying subscriber, as writing the series took a lot of time and effort.

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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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