Snow's Discovery of Cholera Cause

Written Project
1

Table of Contents
QUESTIONS ..................................................................................................................................3
1) Describe the situation that led to Snow’s discovery of the cause of cholera ?.......................3
2) Describe the processes involved in the ‘Scientific Method’?.................................................3
3) Describe the possible impact of sampling error and the placebo effect ?...............................4
4) How did Tversky & Kahneman’s 1974 paper describe the process of decision making ?.....5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
2

QUESTIONS
1) Describe the situation that led to Snow’s discovery of the cause of cholera ?
John snow was born on 1813, March 15 in England. The man received the medical
apprenticeship at the age of 14. During 1832 at the middle of his apprenticeship cholera epidemic
was observed by Snow first. During such vast breakout, the man treated many individuals who
were suffering from cholera. At such period, John Snow got to understand about how the disease
transmit and what clinical symptoms it displays. In 1831 at England, the first case of Cholera
was reported which was assumed to be transmitted by 'miasma' (JOHN SNOW AND THE 1854
CHOLERA OUTBREAK, 2019). The theory of Miasma states that the disease is actually spread
by poisonous form of air which are being discharged by rotting organic matter. After completion
of all medical study, Snow became more curious about the Miasma theory and strongly believed
that dumping sewage contaminated water into rivers would further contaminate the river water to
high levels which ultimately results in causing cholera outbreaks. The man specifically
questioned local residents and workers from hospitals about whether they drank water from any
pumps, using such prior information he went to build a dot map to demonstrate the cluster of
cases which are specifically around usage of water from pumps. On 1854, John took all his
findings to the local officials of Soho and made them clear the scenarios and suggesting to take
the handle off from the pump. The officials did not listen to his theory at that moment and Joseph
Bazalgette aimed in eliminating the smell which was arising from sewage waste by making a
effective sewage system. Irrespective of such success, the outbreak of Cholera strike again who
infected large number of population. The symptoms were initiated by acute diarrhoea and
dehydration followed by greyish and bluish skin and eventual death in 48h hours. The final
epidemic proved that the theory of cholera outlined by John Snow was correct and such disease
is actually water borne. From such high involvement of Joseph and John Snow the cholera
outbreak was conquered and the sewage system was upgraded and build as per modern
metropolis. They both were responsible in saving large number of lives and introduced to whole
world that cholera is cause due to contaminated water.
2) Describe the processes involved in the ‘Scientific Method’?
Scientific method is a type of experimentation which are being popularly utilised in to
explore certain kind of observations and answer basic questions about study. Such type of
3