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"MTG rebukes Simon's report to the Board of Health for ignoring Snow's south London investigation"

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Edited by Editors
Medical Times and Gazette
(28 June 1856): 648

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The Week.

A Report has just been presented to the Board of Health upon the Water Supply of the Metropolis, and in this Report some manifest defects in our present system are pointed out, and some important remedial measures are suggested. It has been shown, that there exists a very appreciable relation between impure water supply and the outbreak of epidemic disease. It is very desirable to purify the water supplied to large towns, by abstracting its contaminations and applying them to agricultural purposes. This idea is not new, and it has been broached on several occasions in this Journal. We think that great credit is due to Dr. Snow for his investigations into the relation existing between impure water-supply and epidemic diseases, and we regret that, in the Report just presented to the Board of Health, no notice is taken of Dr. Snow's laborious researches. During the fearful epidemic of Cholera in the summer of 1854, Dr. Snow conducted a series of valuable personal inquiries for the first seven weeks of the prevalence of the disease, and the results were published in the numbers of this Journal for September 2 and October 7, 1854. It was only after Dr. Snow had laboured at this task for the period above mentioned, that his inquiries were followed up to end of the epidemic by the Registrar-General.


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