The Pump handle Lesson

a physician noticed a cluster of cholera cases, traced the outbreak to a certain public water pump, and saved hundreds of lives by simply removing the pump handle so people had to get water from other sources.

easy peasy, and like Galileo, his findings were immediately accepted by the medical community, right? 

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sigh.

the problem was that people were using contaminated water, but back then the theory was that the disease was caused by "miasma": the smell and fumes of rotting garbage, tanneries etc.

The idea that it might be the water, not the stinky air, as the cause of cholera was not understood... until Dr Snow traced a cluster of cases to one area, and figured what they all had in common was that they all got their drinking water from the same public pump

So he figured it was not the smell but the water was bad, removed the pump, and slowed the epidemic.

Such problems continue in today's world: The most notorious was when, after the Hatian earthquake, UN Peacekeepers from Nepal built their latrines too close to a rives, so the germs flowed into the river. The problem? The normal water supply pipes had broken, so people downstream were using river water for drinking.

Ironically, people in the ancient world sort of figured this out, which is why they rarely drank pure water: in one famous passage,  Paul tells Timothy to mix wine with his water "for his stomach's sake"...  

so anyway, at the time Dr Snow removed the pump handle, he was able to publish his findings, even though the germ theory was not a popular theory of disease.

the Lancet notes 

 ...(for) most medical men at the time: miasma, or the stench from decaying vegetable and animal matter, was widely held responsible for epidemic disease.

Snow's On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, first published in 1849, set out the then radical idea that cholera was a disorder of the digestive system not the blood; and that it was contagious and spread through the oral-faecal route, largely through contaminated drinking water.  

Snow's intervention in Broad Street, Soho, in 1854, when he persuaded the authorities to remove the handle from a contaminated pump well, has caught the public imagination, but it was his “Grand Experiment” that same year that secured his huge reputation in epidemiology.

 

During Britain's second cholera epidemic in 1848–49, both the Lambeth and the Southwark and Vauxhall water companies were taking their supplies from the Thames next to where the London sewers were discharged. By the time of the 1854–55 epidemic, however, Lambeth had moved its works up riverout of reach of the sewage. Here, Snow saw, was the perfect means of testing his theory. He compared the numbers of cholera victims whose water was supplied by the two different companies in 1848–49 with the numbers in 1854–55. During 1848–49, the death rates for the two companies were the same, but by 1854, after Lambeth's move, Southwark and Vauxhall's rate was between eight and nine times higher, and in the first 4 weeks of the epidemic, Southwark and Vauxhall customers had a 14-fold higher risk. In 1855, Snow published a much-expanded second editionof On the Mode of Communication of Cholera that included these results. Again he was largely ignored, although by then the idea that polluted water had some part to play in cholera was gaining ground.

the Lancet article notes how his theory was ridiculed at the time, and even his obituary didn't mention this part of his career:

but the point is that they did publish it.

And Dr. Campbell notes that this is in contrast to the censorship of Covid's origins, ignoring/censoring voices that questioned the epidemiological response to the disease, and of allowing poorly analyzed articles that led to the banning cheap medicines that might or might not have worked.

in that last article, on a debunked and retracted article on HCQ, the critical analysis notes:

true researchers generally appreciate a culture of openness, transparency and mutual criticism. It’s considered part of the process of science maturation. This process is achieved through scientific publication as well as interaction in scientific conferences, meetings or any other media.

Dr. Campbell, a nurse educator/public health expert whose you tube channel has been censored at times, points out how these things are important.

why do I bring this up? 

Because the establishment continues to gaslight the public about covid: 

For example, PBS newshour (which your taxes are supporting of course) objects to Trumpieboy appointing him to run the NIH.

President-elect Trump selected a critic of COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates to lead the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is known for co-authoring the Great Barrington Declaration, a 2020 manifesto that advocated allowing COVID to spread in order to achieve herd immunity. It was widely criticized by top health officials.

 italics mine