Death by diarrhoea

With Mr.Marlow spending the next two weeks touring Scotland, I have permission, and opportunity to spend more time accompanying Dr.Snow and pursuing my studies. And while the merchant families provide the greater part of his income, his compassion extends to treating many of the Irish immigrants who can barely afford a guinea for a consultation, unlike one of his colleagues who I met in the course of business, and who declined to attend a sick child because the family could not afford his fee, but neither were they poor enough to qualify for support from the parish rate.
I was aware of the outbreak of cholera in the city, and have been very careful about boiling water for use in the house, and taking a small flask of boiled water with me when I accompany the doctor since I can't afford to risk being infected myself¹. When I arrived at Dr.Snow's consulting room this afternoon it had already been made abundantly clear to me just why so many people choose to leave London during the summer. There are some districts where the smell is just unimaginable! I was reminded of the smell of newly-turned stale horse-manure, and it seemed to linger in small pockets all along my route. Even breathing through my mouth I found myself gagging and holding a handkerchief and a small spray of lavender (threepence-halfpenny) over my face.
When I arrived, Dr.Snow first asked me to read a 39-page pamphlet² which he had written: it seems astonishing that I should have held one of the first printed copies of a small book with the power to change the course of scientific thought. But in typical manner, before I had time to read the book thoroughly, Dr.Snow invited me to join him in his laboratory, a small room adjacent to his surgery where he directed me to examine for myself two slides which he had mounted; one prepared with water from a brook on Hampstead Heath, the other with water from the Thames.
While the Hampstead Heath sample has its share of flotsam, the sample from the Thames seems positively crowded by comparison!
I was still making my own drawings from the slides under the microscope when Dr.Snow had a visitor; a Police constable had arrived to request his assistance in caring for an injured navigator, a "Tunnel Tiger", having first tried to obtain the services of Dr.Barrett, being nearer to Rotherhithe. But since Dr.Barrett was already attending a patient, he recommended his colleague Dr.Snow, even though it would mean travelling further.
When we arrived at the Police station where Brendan Daugherty had been made as comfortable as possible my first impression was that a drunken Irishman had injured himself. It wasn't until Dr.Snow began taking the man's verbal history while he gently unbandaged the poor fellow's ruined hand that I understood; his intoxication was the result of cheap brandy, administered as an analgesic. And it is as a tribute to this unfortunate, and so many like him, that I include the following song:

References

1. Recommended precautions for preventing, and coping with cholera
2. On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, reprinted 1855

                   

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