This episode was written during the coronavirus lockdown.
And it's not, not an un-coincidence that it's about a map that stopped a deadly disease.
Welcome to Map Men
- We're the men... - and here's the map.
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200 years ago, cholera was one of the most feared illnesses, or indeed anythings in the world.
Nobody knew how it spread or where it came from
but they did know that if you got it there was a 50% chance you would die, sometimes within just one day.
and a pretty unpleasant final day it would be too.
Within hours, cholera can cause teeth to protrude, eyes to sink, and blood to thicken and turn blue
giving cholera its nickname "the blue terror".
- I'm terrified.
This is because cholera causes the body to lose as much water as possible in the shortest possible time -
as much as 20 litres in a day.
Because it spread so quickly between people, scientists spent literally hours thinking about ways to fix cholera.
To a man, they were all convinced it was passed around through bad air
which they called "miasma" to try and sound clever.
It wasn't until someone called John Snow, not that Jon Snow, not that John Snow, this John Snow
did some thinking of his own that progress was finally made.
The story starts in old York in the olden days.
John grew up in a poor part of the city where sewage flowed openly in the street and filth was a fact of life.
- Oh look!
an apple!
Snow was so grossed out by it, he became unusually health conscious
and styled himself on a 21st century hipster.
He didn't drink alcohol, was a vegetarian, and insisted on only drinking distilled water.
Snow escaped his life of squalor by being very good at maths.
and was offered a place at Newcastle to train as a physician.
He first witnessed the grim effects of cholera while treating patients in the nearby coal mining town of Killingworth.
He noticed that men who worked down the pit were dying of cholera at exactly the same rate as everyone else
even though they were nowhere near the foul air of the town.
He began to suspect cholera had nothing to do with bad air
instead suspecting it might instead have something to do with the water, instead.
But because Victorian scientists really enjoyed using the word "miasma",
they all ignored his radical theory.
Snow would need hard proof to convince the doubters
and finally got the chance years later when he moved down to London.
In 1854, cholera struck Soho in the heart of London.
And John Snow had just moved into a house in the heart of Soho, on Sackville Street right by the Itsu.
He was in the perfect place at the perfect time.
Yes!
I mean... how awful.
Snow went from door to door recording as much as he could about the cases that had occurred so far.
- Cholera?
Good.
Excitingly, he then plotted his data onto a map.
When Snow looked at the data he'd collected, he made an astonishing discovery.
Almost all the recorded cases occurred near the Broad Street water pump.
The further from the pump he went, the fewer deaths he recorded. A clear pattern had emerged.
What John Snow was doing was one of the earliest known examples of data journalism
which doesn't sound sexy, and isn't sexy, but I still like it.
Still, in order to finally prove to all the miasma-ists out there that it really was the pump, Snow needed a watertight case.
- That's a good pun. - I know.
But there appeared to be some anomalies, such as an isolated case miles away to the north in Hampstead.
How did the cholera get all the way up there?
He went to speak to the elderly victim
and it turned out her niece had been bringing her the water from Broad Street
because, like many others, she thought the Broad Street water tasted sweeter.
And we'll try not the think about the fact that "sweeter" in this case was another way of saying "contained sewage".
Eurgh.
As well as cases far away from the pump, there was another type of anomaly that needed explaining -
non-cases, really close to the pump
such as the workhouse on nearby Poland Street, which had bizarrely recorded hardly any deaths at all.
So Snow went to visit the workhouse, and found they had their very own water well for water.
Water surprise.
There were also no deaths at the local ale distillery
When Snow tried to interview people who worked there, nothing they said made any sense.
which made sense, because it turned out that instead of getting cholera, they'd been getting drunk.
No water, no cholera.
Every apparent setback to Snow's water theory
only ended up making his case even waterier and tighterier than ever before.
So he took his map to the local health commission
who were convinced enough to remove the handle from the Broad Street pump.
And a good job they did, because the cases immediately started drying up.
- The other two were better. - Yeah, I know.
But how did that pump get infected in the first place?
He found the answer with the help of a holy gossipmonger.
Henry Whitehead, the local priest, knew everybody's business, including who had diarrhoea when.
With a combination of Whitehead's nosiness and Snow's clever map-making
they were able to trace the outbreak back to case zero:
a baby living at number 40 whose mother had been washing nappies into the house's underground cesspit.
Not not unsurprisingly, they found cracks between the cesspit and the well
finally confirming that everyone had been drinking number 40's number twos.
We have to take our hats off to this gruesome twosome for collecting so much data over what must have been months of work.
Actually, the whole endeavour from start to finish took just three days.
Woooow!!
Shockingly, despite all the evidence they gathered and with the outbreak cleared up as a result of their work,
the mainstream miasma-ists continued to ignore John Snow's findings
and the local council soon popped the handle back on the Broad Street pump as if nothing was ever wrong with it.
As always seems to happen when someone does something amazing
John Snow died before his work was accepted.
Luckily today, medical experts are always taken seriously and their advice is always listened to by people in charge
who are never interested in personal political gain over rigorous evidence-led, peer reviewed, scientific facts.
Except sometimes it isn't(!)
which is why every year to this day, the medical community holds the Pumphandle Lecture
during which, a mock handle is ceremonially removed and replaced
in recognition of the struggle of getting people in charge to listen to doctors.
Perhaps the most fun way John Snow is remembered today is in the form of this pub, the John Snow... pub.
We're not sure how the famously teetotal John Snow would have felt about this
but either way, cheers to John Snow.
Cheers!
Hmm... tastes quite sweet.
- Hello, I'm Edward. - And I'm William.
And you join us at the start of a motor-tastic road trip.
Over the next 52 days, we're going to be visiting every single motorway service station in Britain!
And on the way, we'll get to see lots of other really cool things like castles and cathedrals...
No! There's no time for that. We're only visiting motorway service stations.
We're going to visit Toddington, and Newport Pagnell, and Watford Gap, and...
(thinking) N'ohh, this 2,713 mile journey's going to be really boring.
I know!
I'll keep myself entertained by listening to a wide selection of audiobooks using Audible.
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Audiobooks are like books for your ears, usually read by the author, sometimes read by other handsome narrators.
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such as Pat Sharp's hilarious semi-fictional autobiography.
And it's not just audiobooks you find on Audible, there's all sorts of spoken-word entertainment
like podcasts, guided wellness programmes, and TV and radio shows.
You can keep credits for up to a year and then binge on a whole series.
You can download and listen offline any time across devices without losing your spot.
It's so good!
If you want to try Audible for yourself, just go to audible.com/mapmen to get a free 30 day trial..
And for Americans, there's also a special holiday offer on Audible Plus membership.
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If you're in the US, text Map Men to 500-500.
Or if you're in any other country, go to audible.com/mapmen for a free 30 day trial of Audible.
There's, like, nothing stopping you.
Oh I'm really looking forward to this trip now that I know that it's going to be accompanied by the soundtrack of
hours and hours of scintillating entertainment from Audible!
...and Thurrock. Right! Let's motor away...
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