Today is September 8. One hundred and fifty nine years ago today, on what was then Broad Street near the Golden Square in London, something remarkable occurred.

Based on evidence given by a local physician named Dr. John Snow, the Board of Governors of St. James Parish voted to remove the handle from the water pump on Broad Street.

In his wonderful book, The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson calls the removal of the handle "a historical turning point" and goes on to say that "for the first time a public institution had made an informed intervention into a cholera outbreak based on a scientifically sound theory of the disease." Cholera was being challenged by "reason, not superstition."

When researching The Great Trouble, my historical fiction book for young readers about the 1854 epidemic, I stood on Broadwick Street in London, and found the red stone that marks the location of the original pump. The remnants of the old peek through on the street today, enough so that it wasn't hard to imagine that moment.

And it's one worth remembering, because cholera hasn't disappeared. One well on a London street was contaminated in 1854, Haiti's largest river was contaminated in 2010. September 8, 1854 is worth remembering.





The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World




The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel