Medical discoveries in old Soho.
London’s Soho defies a label: it’s restaurants, bars, entertainment, music, theatre, art, architecture, film, retail… and a Petri dish for Victorian science.
Away from the crowds around Shaftesbury Avenue and Chinatown, in the streets towards Oxford Street, it’s less frantic and you have time to take in your surroundings. Some of it is little changed since Georgian times – except, of course, for the water pipes under your feet. In those days there was no plumbing in this crowded corner of the city, and everyone depended on the neighbourhood well for their drinking water.
While you’re in Lexington Street perusing the shops and restaurants you can check off one of London’s many locations marking the ground-breaking discoveries that were so vital to medicine and public health. At the north end, on the corner of Broadwick Street, is a pub called the John Snow. Who was he, and why here?
In 1854, while working in Soho as a physician and epidemiologist, John Snow became concerned about an outbreak of deadly cholera nearby. He did not accept the then-current theory of ‘miasma’ – disease being spread by smells in the air – and by careful observation he deduced that water from a sewage-contaminated well in Broad Street (now called Broadwick Street) was the source. He persuaded the local authority to remove the pump handle, obliging the residents to draw their water from elsewhere. New cases of cholera rapidly diminished.
His continuing work to confirm his findings and persuade the many doubters set in train an eventual acceptance of his theories by the medical profession, and a revolution in the protection of the population’s health. A plaque on the wall of the pub commemorates his achievement, and a replica pump stands on the footpath outside, close to the site of the original.
Give yourself a pat on the back for visiting, and stroll off to find other sites of noteworthy achievement in London.
Graham Walker.