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A representation by Robert Seymour of the cholera epidemic depicts the spread of the disease in the form of poisonous air.. The miasma theory was the predominant theory of disease transmission before the germ theory took hold towards the end of the 19th century; it is no longer accepted as a correct explanation for disease by the scientific community.
The germ theory was not yet established (Louis Pasteur proposed it in 1861). Snow did not understand the mechanism by which disease was transmitted, but the evidence led him to believe that it was not foul air. Based on the pattern of illness among residents, he hypothesized that cholera was spread by an agent in contaminated water. [7]
An 1831 color lithograph by Robert Seymour depicts cholera as a robed, skeletal creature emanating a deadly black cloud.. The miasma theory (also called the miasmic theory) is an abandoned medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma (μίασμα, Ancient Greek for 'pollution'), a noxious form of "bad air", also known as ...
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World is a book by Steven Berlin Johnson in which he describes the most intense outbreak of cholera in Victorian London and centers on John Snow and Henry Whitehead. [1] It was released on 19 October 2006 through Riverhead.
This began the path to germ specificity within the theory. [49] Louis Pasteur's contemporary Robert Koch devoted much of his scientific study to discovering certain pathogens and connecting them to specific diseases. These scientists were often in competition with one another and so the Koch-Pasteur rivalry is a well-known part of germ theory's ...
John Snow (15 March 1813 – 16 June 1858 [1]) was an English physician and a leader in the development of anaesthesia and medical hygiene.He is considered one of the founders of modern epidemiology and early germ theory, in part because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in London's Soho, which he identified as a particular public water pump.
An infectious disease agent can be transmitted in two ways: as horizontal disease agent transmission from one individual to another in the same generation (peers in the same age group) [3] by either direct contact (licking, touching, biting), or indirect contact through air – cough or sneeze (vectors or fomites that allow the transmission of the agent causing the disease without physical ...
A focus of infection is a place containing whatever epidemiological factors are needed for transmission of an infection. Any focus of infection will have a source of infection, and other common traits of such a place include a human community, a vector population, and environmental characteristics adequate for spreading infection.