enjoy theaters and music halls Yet for all the advances in London as well as other urban centers worldwide there was no means for the safe disposal of human waste Watch Your Step and Cover Your Nose The masses of people living in London in the mid 1800s translated into masses of waste at a time when flushing toilets hadn't yet gained popularity Some people dumped their waste into cesspits in their cellars but many of those cesspits leaked or overflowed Others disposed of human waste by simply throwing it out of windows into the street or defecating directly on the street itself Either way the result was that a walk down any city street was downright hazardous When it rained the rainwater cleaned the streets Waste then went into the various streams and rivers in the city The rivers then acted as sewers channeling all the waste into London's river Thames The river also happened to be a significant source of water pumped for human consumption People called out Regardez l eaul before tossing their waste out the window which literally translates to Watch out for the water This is the origin of the word loo which is what the British call the bathroom During the Victorian era 1837 1901 most people didn't know how to deal with waste People chucked it out the window walked around it on the street and held
handkerchiefs over their noses to avoid the smell but were too polite to discuss it As a result sanitation developments were at a standstill in a rapidly growing city Other large cities in the 1800s experienced stenches similar to London's including Melbourne Australia The smell rising from the open sewage gutters became so bad the city was nicknamed Smelbourne By the mid 1800s the Thames was dead The once vibrant fishing industry along its banks was gone Three in 20 babies born in London died before reaching the age of one In 1848 disease was so rampant in the city it claimed the lives of 14 000 people Marginal efforts to clean up London began in September 1848 with the establishment of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers Although the government was talking about waste the efforts were inadequate and did not address the complete overhaul the city's sewage and drainage systems needed Snow in London As the number of people in the city grew so did the piles of excrement and disease Even containing it to outhouses did little to curb disease outbreaks because inadequate sewer systems leaked into sources of drinking water During an 1854 cholera outbreak Dr John Snow investigated his theory that the disease spread through infected water This was a revolutionary idea since most scientists at the time believed the disease spread through the stench in the air
which was known as the miasma theory People believed they could catch cholera by inhaling air infected by exposure to the disease Author Steven Johnson explains what Snow proved about cholera Sanitary conditions were crucial to fighting the disease but foul air had nothing to do with its transmission Cholera wasn't something you inhaled It was something you swallowed CHOLERA The cholera bacteria arrived in London from India in 1831 It is a waterborne disease transmitted primarily through human feces and it affects the stomach As a result a person infected with cholera experiences great bouts of diarrhea Not only is this uncomfortable but one loses great amounts of water at the same time The water loss quickly affects other organs including the liver and kidneys Eventually fatigue settles in and the patient becomes unconscious At the time of the London outbreaks no one knew what caused cholera nor were there any effective remedies Two thirds of those who contracted cholera never recovered Despite the naysayers Snow marked on a map all the deaths in one area of London This revealed deaths were concentrated around a water pump on Broad Street Snow visited homes and businesses in the area One remarkable finding was a nearby brewery was unaffected by cholera Snow believed it was because patrons drank beer not water Confident the water source on Broad Street was contaminated Snow removed the handle of the pump so no one could use it The result was a marked drop in deaths in the area demonstrating a link between cholera and contaminated water Newly gathered data also revealed death 10
rates were higher in densely populated areas than in rural ones suggesting the foul urban environment contributed to the disease During the 1890s Louis Pasteur's germ theory demonstrated how disease spread and emphasized good hygiene was essential to good health Despite these discoveries however there was no concrete evidence linking contaminated water and disease and Snow's ideas were dismissed It took 30 more years until Snow's theory was proven In the meantime the miasma theory remained the popular explanation for epidemics Summer of 1858 By the summer of 1858 the Thames was an open sewer Every day 12 million cubic feet 340 000 cu m of human waste went into the river Then to make Snow argued there was a misconception about how cholera was spread
