John Snow, Asiatic Cholera and the inductive-deductive method

Lecture 4: Competing theories on the origin and spread of infectious disease

Last week we discussed what was known of the spread of Asiatic Cholera, Snow’s observation on the incubation period and the problems with defining numerator and denominators.  In today’s post we will describe the competing theories on the origin and spread of infectious diseases which were around in Snow’s time. On Thursday we will learn about disseminated source outbreaks.

The Snow series is an educational course for paying subscribers only.