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Author:
Ralph R.
Frerichs, DVM, DrPH Every field benefits from a hero who captures its aspirations and successes. In epidemiology, that hero is British physician Dr. John Snow (1813 -1858). During 1999-2000, while active in the UCLA Department of Epidemiology as Professor and Chair, I created what turned out to be one of the first online extensive resources dedicated to John Snow's work. It provided a central access to historical London maps and other materials related to his cholera investigations, previously more difficult to locate, and introduced the field of epidemiology to a broader audience. The site remained active for two decades until 2019 when the web adopted new safety standards, addressing risks of computer viruses and the like. By then I had been retired for some while and was engaged in different activities. Others, however, paid attention to the dangers, and were no longer willing to risk clicking on an “unsecured” website. In late 2024, the Chair of Epidemiology urged me to consider upgrading the John Snow site, including finding new material (a joy), learning new programming skills (not so joyful), satisfying UCLA disability requirements, and making sure the material appears on phones, pads and desktops. It was a hard slog and a year later, the new site emerged in October 2025, on the web once more at: https://epi-snow.ph.ucla.edu/. What makes the new John Snow site special? Rather than offering just snippets on Snow’s major accomplishments, the site with its many colorful maps and images is more comprehensive, presenting five streams of John Snow’s life, now deemed the “father of modern epidemiology.” The site’s intention is to remind epidemiologists of their glorious history, and to attract young people to the wonders of epidemiology, considering it as a possible career choice.
The opening three paragraphs of the website best capture what follows. British physician John Snow (1813-1858) is considered by many as the "father of modern epidemiology" for his seminal investigations of cholera in London, long before the bacterial agent and its deadly toxin were widely known. During the mid-1800s, the prevailing notion of the cause of cholera was being overcome by "bad air” (the miasma theory). Snow's epidemiological investigations, however, pointed to the disease being transmitted through contaminated water, likely by a biological agent of some ill-defined form (the germ theory), a conclusion that was widely debated until well after Snow's death at age 45 in 1858. Unbeknownst to Snow, the Italian microbiologist Filippo Pacini (1812-1883) had already seen the causative agent of cholera in 1854 while Snow was conducting his famous field studies. The bacterium Vibrio cholerae was finally cultured and identified in January 1884 with great publicity by German physician and microbiologist Robert Koch who wrote widely of its distinctive comma shape, perhaps not aware of Pacini's earlier observations. While Koch hypothesized that the organism produced a toxin, another 75 years |
