Chandak Sengoopta

Beware of the Water

The Medical Detective: John Snow and the Mystery of Cholera

By

Granta Books 304pp £17.99 order from our bookshop

Britain was struck by four cholera epidemics between 1831 and 1867. Although it was an age of fatal infectious diseases, none was as gruesome as this exotic import from darkest Asia. It began with violent stomach cramps and diarrhoea, and the patient died swiftly (though far from painlessly) from acute dehydration. The disease spread like wildfire through communities, and entire neighbourhoods were wiped out in a matter of days. There was no cure and no consensus on how to prevent it. The majority of Victorian doctors thought that the disease was spread by a miasmic influence carried by foul air. The idea was far from implausible, especially since the filthiest parts of towns seemed to be most vulnerable to the disease. 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Gone. All gone. The ease, the pleasure, the effortless eloquence' From May 1995, Margaret Forster's withering rev… ,
    • RT : SO excited to tell you about this event! 😆 The amazing digital colourist, will be joining w… ,
    • 'Peters was unashamed and evidently unshamable, an impostor who wholly inhabited his fabrications and who indignant… ,
    • ‘At every waking moment Barbara Hepworth was aware of herself as a woman paving the way in a man’s world’ From the… ,
    • The entertaining Howard Jacobson is in conversation with Prof John Mullan at the Queen’s Park Book Festival on Sund… ,
    • 'A modest and retiring man, Thompson spent his life describing apple varieties and recommending the best – Ribston… ,
    • 'Macfarlane is a poet with the instincts of a thriller writer, an autodidact in botany, mycology, geology and palae… ,
    Follow Us