Bibliographical Miscellany

This portion of the Web site will be updated regularly. If you have suggestions for material to be included, please send them to:

Peter Vinten-Johansen
vintenjo@mail.msu.edu

• Howard Brody on Sandra Hempel, The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump: John Snow and the Mystery of Cholera (2007); first printed in England as The Medical Detective: John Snow and the Mystery of Cholera (2006).
• David Zuck on Stephanie J. Snow, Operations Without Pain: The Practice and Science of Anaesthesia in Victorian Britain (2005); online review at http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/zuck.html (posted 14 February 2006).
• Richard Barnett on Stephanie J. Snow, Operations Without Pain: The Practice and Science of Anaesthesia in Victorian Britain (2006); online review at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi. (posted 1 April 2007).
• Richard A. Finkelstein on Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic – And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (2006); and Sandra Hempel, The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump (2006).
  [an edited version of this review was published in New England Journal of Medicine 356 (12 April 2007): 1593-94.]

There is a staggering amount of disagreement about what Snow ostensibly did, and when he did it, particularly (but hardly exclusively) with respect to his activities during the 1854 London cholera epidemic. This portion of the Web site provides some samples of this disagreement from both scholarly and popular works written since his death in 1858. You are encouraged to compare the views of these commentators with Snow's own accounts of his thinking and doings, as set forth in the "Snow's Works" portion of the Web site.

• Benjamin Richardson on Snow's interests in cholera, other epidemic diseases, and London medical societies where he discussed those interests (1858).
• Extracts from P. E. Brown's, "Another Look at John Snow" (1964), in which Brown argues that Snow, the epidemiologist, was far inferior to Snow, the anesthetist.
• William McNeill on the lack of influence of Snow's 1854 cholera investigation "in a district of central London."
• Anthony Wohl on Snow's application of Budd's theory to explain the London cholera epidemics of 1849 and 1854.
• Laurie Garrett on Snow, who ostensibly removed the handle on the Broad Street pump in 1849 and "mapped of cholera cases and traced their water supplies" in 1854, and his influence on the emergence of sanitary measures.
• Robin Marantz Henig on Snow as a hero among public health experts because he ostensibly halted a cholera outbreak after noting the deaths on a map, then removed the handle of the Broad Street pump, the water for which was provided by a private water company drawing its supply from a polluted section of the River Thames.
• David Satcher on the origin of the interrogative, "Where is the handle on this Broad Street pump?"
• Roy Porter on the "key event" in the use of chloroform in obstetrics: Snow's administration during Queen Victoria's delivery in April 1853.
• Roy Porter on Snow's intervention in the Broad Street epidemic as ostensibly providing "confirmation of his theory," Snow’s testimony before a Select Committee of the House of Commons as effecting changes in sanitary reforms, yet continued confusion about the "causation of urban epidemics."
• Extracts from Ed Glinert’s London Compendium (2004) about the John Snow pub and Snow’s cholera investigations in 1853-54.
• Extracts from Liza Picard’s Victorian London (2006) about John Snow’s early years as a surgeon, his use of chloroform in midwifery, and his interventions in London’s mid-century cholera epidemics.