![]() ![]() The reason the cholera body count hadn’t grown exponentially was that only the Lewis family could access the cesspool-therefore, baby Lewis’s waste was the only source of cholera in the well, and the cholera agent wasn’t growing exponentially. Whitehead realized that the surveyor had answered his objections to Snow’s theory. Steven Johnson is the bestselling author of twelve books, including Enemy of All Mankind, Farsighted, Wonderland, How We Got to Now, Where Good Ideas Come From, The Invention of Air, The Ghost Map, and Everything Bad Is Good for You. Earlier investigations had missed the cesspool connection, perhaps because they were too focused on miasma. ![]() He commissioned surveyors to examine the cesspool, and the surveyor found that it had, indeed, leaked into the well. Whitehead realized that the baby’s cholera evacuations must have been deposited near the Broad Street well. Whitehead interviewed Sarah Lewis and learned that she’d thrown soiled diapers into a cesspool. While studying the data, he came across the medical report for baby Lewis, who’d experienced diarrhea before dying. He began searching for an “index case”-i.e., the earliest cholera victim of 1854. ![]() As the data about the cholera outbreak continued to pile up, Whitehead began to believe Snow’s theory. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |