HCA 415 Final Paper

Running head: JOHN SNOW ON COMMUNICABLE DISEASES 0

John Snow on Communicable Diseases

Brenda Rouse

HCA415: Community & Public Health (HCK1711A)

Instructor: Kristin Akerele

April 3, 2017

John Snow on Communicable Diseases

John Snow was a skilled physician, born in 1813, and made a significant contribution to the appropriate use of chloroform in the then society, and a significant discovery on the control of the spread of cholera in London, where he ended up being a doctor after acquiring his M.D degree. Notably, as a teenager, he began an apprenticeship program in medicine under a famous doctor in New Castle. Although he went ahead to make progress in medicine by himself, he had acquired significant insight in practice from his interaction with the doctor. His research on communicable diseases that earned him quite the reputation as he had to grapple with the challenge of getting people to buy into his idea and adopt ways that would effectively reduce the rate of transmission of the disease.

Research Barriers

Unlike the modern society, research in the earlier centuries was not entirely funded by the government, and only those who were very interested in making significant milestones in the health sector would dare conduct the different study. For example, there had been limited efforts by the government to find the possible causes of diarrhea, which had left thousands dead in Europe in the early nineteenth century. Nonetheless, lack of such support did not deter John Snow from focusing on an issue that he felt were of importance to the society. Further, there was limited technology to analyze the different aspects of patients such as their blood components to ascertain the existence of anomalies that could have been the cause of diseases. Consequently, the conditions of research were so poor that only the resilient health researchers could end up with tangible evidence of the possibility of pathogens being the cause of infections.

How John Snow Overcame the Barriers

With limited funding to the study of the communicable disease, John Snow had to ensure that he spent his resources wisely and only where necessary. Following the second outbreak of cholera in London in the year 1848, Snow made the inference that there were limited chances that the disease spread from the gas resulting from sewers and waste disposal sites (Brody, Rip, Vinten-Johansen, Paneth, & Rachman, 2000). Previous research had indicated such sights as producing gasses through which the disease was transmitted. Consequently, Snow employed analytical skills purely in the early stages of his research. He made deductions based on the information he gathered from the patients, and the observations he made of the patients who came to him for treatment. Since the availability of resources was the primary research barrier to his work, he made use of what he had to come up with possible solutions to the outbreak by tracking the epicenter of the outbreaks.

His analysis bore fruit particularly as it had the opportunity to assess the initial victims of the outbreak and track the transmission from one victim to the other. He led an investigation that culminated in the determination of the possible causes of the disease, upon which future research on the issue was based. He may have lacked enough support from others within the medical profession, but the chances are that his apprenticeship experience and observation of principles in the medical profession may have provided enough insight on how he would effectively investigate the outbreak and develop solutions with limited need for financial resources.

Contribution to the Society

Notably, cholera was a killer disease in the early nineteenth century, and its outbreak spelled doom for the society that suffered from the disease (Colwell, 2004). There was no cure for it as all the other conventional treatments for digestive related issues would not work against it. The medical practitioners would try and treat the symptoms of the disease and, in some cases, the patients would recover since they would receive enough hydration following the dehydrate effects if cholera. However, they did not address the primary issue of the spread of the disease, which implies that they only solved the problem halfway. Snow’s research addressed the issue of the spread, and those that followed his advice experienced a decrease in the rate of contracting cholera and a reduced number of deaths in the European community.

Therefore, the contribution of the research findings ended up reducing the death rate in the society and a consequent insight on how best the society would deal with diseases that appeared to spread in a similar manner (Ashbolt, 2004). His argument that the presence of digestion related issues as the first symptoms of the disease indicated that it was spread via the digestive tract proceeded to become a basis of analysis for future researchers. Therefore, in addition to providing a solution to a disturbing issue in the community, Snow provided a basis for future investigation of health issues.

Specifically, the research was helpful to the community at the time since there were no alternative studies or medications that would effectively cure cholera. The technology was still in its formative stages and, although the medical fraternity had gained an appreciation of the existence of germs two centuries earlier, it was yet to understand the possibility of the organisms causing diseases to human beings (Hempel, 2006). Therefore, there were limited studies aimed at establishing the location of such organisms in the environment. On the contrary, the society had accepted that the disease spread through foul found in waste, its outbreak spelled doom for the nation, and all they could do was treat the symptoms and hope that they did not cost them their lives. Such despondency and lack of alternative approaches to research implied that only those with excellent analytical skills would find alternative angles from which to conduct studies on the prevalence of cholera.

The lack of technology and government support further complicated the research process, which ended up being an additional factor to the lack of insight on the issue. As earlier stated, unless the scholar was entirely motivated to study the communicable diseases, there were limited chances that he or she would spend time in the field, using his or her resources to find a solution to the issue. Consequently, John Snow’s findings were helpful to the society as they laid to rest to the issue by providing a reliable solution upon which the society would depend until there were enough resources to sponsor alternative research that would find a cure to the problem. Therefore, a precautionary approach was the most efficient in protecting the society from the adversities that accompanied the outbreaks. The solution Snow provided was certain in solving the cholera crisis and would be employed early enough in the event of a subsequent outbreak. It would be effective in preventing mass casualties in the future much to the extent that the 1848 outbreak was the last severe cholera outbreak in London.

References

Ashbolt, Nicholas John. "Microbial contamination of drinking water and disease outcomes in developing regions." Toxicology 198.1 (2004): 229-238.

Brody, H., Rip, M. R., Vinten-Johansen, P., Paneth, N., & Rachman, S. (2000). Map-making and myth-making in Broad Street: the London cholera epidemic, 1854. The Lancet, 356(9223), 64-68.

Colwell, R. R. (2004). Infectious disease and environment: cholera as a paradigm for waterborne disease. International Microbiology, 7(4), 285-289.

Hempel, S. (2006). The strange case of the Broad Street pump: John Snow and the mystery of cholera. Berkeley, LA: University of California Press.