Attack on Cholera

The cholera outbreak in London 1854 on Broad Street resulted in 616 deaths and the culprit was from a single water pump. Back then, there were two main theories as to how cholera spread: the miasma theory and the germ theory. The miasma was a widely accepted idea that diseases like cholera, the Black Death, and chlamydia were caused by a noxious form of “bad air”. The germ theory, on the other hand, took a more scientific approach, it hypothesized that diseases cholera were caused by “germ” agents. John Snow (no, not King of the North dude), is considered the Father of Epidemiology for his contributions to stopping the 1854 cholera outbreak. By hashing the locations of each death, Snow was able to identify a common factor of the victims; they were all drinking water from the same pump. This brilliant use of data plotted on a map is what we would call data visualization, a simple yet powerful and efficient way to convey data.

For this project, I attempt to use the data collected by Snow and visually represent what happened in 1854 Broad Street. By plotting simple table graphs that depict the attacks and deaths of victims to more complex GIS (geographic information system) that shows locations of deaths.

Attacks and Deaths

Fatalities by Age and Sex

UK Census

GIS