How the experts got the cholera outbreak of 1854 so wrong - WBUR News

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The cholera epidemic of 1854 quickly killed more than 600 people in a neighborhood of London. Officials incorrectly assumed it spread through smelly air, until one maverick doctor insisted that contaminated water was the culprit.

Here & Now's Scott Tong looks at how the health establishment had false assumptions about cholera and the parallels with the COVID pandemic, where experts made a similar wrong assumption about how the virus spread.

Author Sandra Hemphill at a replica of the historic Broad Street Pump in London. (Scott Tong/Here & Now)
Author Sandra Hempel at a replica of the historic Broad Street Pump in London. (Scott Tong/Here & Now)
Retired epidemiologist Rosalind Stanwell-Smith of the John Snow Society, with a photo of Snow in the background. (Scott Tong/Here & Now)
Retired epidemiologist Rosalind Stanwell-Smith of the John Snow Society, with a photo of Snow in the background. (Scott Tong/Here & Now)

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