This collection includes documents from the five separate investigations that were conducted into the possible causes. John Snow and Henry Whitehead made independent investigations; inspectors from the General Board of Health and the Sewer Commission, as well as a parish inquiry committee, also scrutinized the outbreak. This volume traces competing notions of how this disease was transmitted, starting with the first pandemic, which reached England in 1831, and it documents how they developed over time.
Peter Vinten-Johansen is Associate Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University. He is the lead author of Cholera, Chloroform, and the Science of Medicine: A Life of John Snow, with co-authors Howard Brody, Nigel Paneth, Stephen Rachman, and Michael Rip, and he is the co-founder and content manager of the John Snow Archive and Research Companion.