1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak

The Broad Street cholera outbreak (or Golden Square outbreak) was a severe outbreak of cholera that occurred near Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) in the Soho district of London, England in 1854. This outbreak, which killed 616 people, is best known for the physician John Snow's study of its causes and his hypothesis that contaminated water, not air, spread cholera. This discovery came to influence public health and the construction of improved sanitation facilities beginning in the 19th century. Later, the term "focus of infection" would be used to describe places like the Broad Street pump in which conditions are good for transmission of an infection.

In the mid-19th century, the Soho district of London had a serious problem with filth due to the large influx of people and a lack of proper sanitary services: the London sewer system had not reached Soho. Cowsheds, slaughter houses and grease boiling dens lined the streets and contributed animal droppings, rotting fluids and other contaminants to the primitive Soho sewer system. Many cellars had cesspools underneath their floorboards which formed from the sewers and filth seeping in from the outside. Since the cesspools were overrunning, the London government decided to dump the waste into the River Thames, contaminating the water supply. London had already suffered from a "series of debilitating cholera outbreaks" which included an outbreak in 1832 and 1849 which killed 14,137 people.

Preceding the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak there were two competing theories on the causes of cholera in the human body. The London medical community debated between Miasma theory and Germ theory as two possible causes for the persistent cholera outbreaks in the city. The Cholera causing gram negative bacteriumVibrio Cholerae, would not be first isolated until 1854, ironically the same year as the Broad street cholera outbreak, and would be first publicized by Robert Koch, a German Physician and Bacteriologist until 1883.

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