Snow, Dr John

John Snow (1813 – 1858) was an English physician and pioneering epidemiologist. His famous dot map of the cholera outbreak in Soho, London, in 1854 can claim to have changed the world. He recorded the locations of all the victims which showed them to be clustered around a public water pump. This allowed him to identify the pump as the probable source of the outbreak, which he curtailed by removing its handle. Snow's findings changed our understanding of the way the disease is transmitted, resulting in fundamental changes in London's water and waste infrastructure, and ultimately to significant improvement in general public health around the world. 

These maps are scarce. We have two variants of his map in our catalogue. The editions of the maps that we stock were published by the River Pollution Commission in Hansard in 1874. In addition to his classic original untitled map, we also have a larger scale map which is a development of his original map, which highlights the then-recent changes to the local sewers, and believed locations of plague pits. If the maps are not showing as in stock below, click to read more and view Snow's dot maps of the Soho 1854 Cholera outbreak in our blog post.