First Half:
Short Answer Questions
1. In The Night-Soil Men, who were the toshers and what did they do? (page 1)
2. In The Night-Soil Men, what type of specialists emerged to take care of waste removal? (page 4)
3. How is cholera spread? (page 37)
4. What is the cure for cholera? (page 45)
5. How old was Snow when he apprenticed to a surgeon on Newcastle-on-Tyne? (page 58)
6. When and where was ether first introduced, and when was it first available in London? (page 63)
7. In The Investigator, what device did Snow create with instrument maker Daniel Ferguson to control the dosage of ether? (page 64)
8. When did Queen Victoria decide to give chloroform a try? Why? (page 66)
9. When did Snow propose a theory that an agent that victims ingested was the cause of cholera? (page 71)
10. What were mortality rates in 1842? (page 84)
Essay Topics
Write an essay for each of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
What two primary studies did Snow base his theory that cholera is waterborne? What details of these cases provided the necessary evidence to support that theory?
Essay Topic 2
Henry Whitehead made vital contributions to the investigation of the cholera outbreak in 1854. What were his contributions, and how did his contributions influence authorities to accept the waterborne theory of cholera?
Essay Topic 3
Johnson referred to London’s underclass of scavengers as the canary in a mine. Why did Johnson compare the scavengers to a canary in a mine, and how did scavengers in that role disprove the idea that exposure to odors caused cholera outbreaks?
Second Half/End of book
Short Answer Questions
1. In “All Smell is Disease,” why might Henry Whitehead have believed that the cholera might be ending? (111)
2. When did Edwin Chadwick publish his study of sanitation among the laboring classes? What aspects of Chadwick’s work are now taken for granted?(113)
3. In “Building the Case,” how would residents of Cross Street get to the Broad Street pump? (140)
4. In “Building the Case,” what did Snow discover that seemed to point to a reason why residents at 50 Poland Street and workers at the Lion Brewery did not contract cholera? (142)
5. In “Building the Case,” what did Snow learn about water at the Eley Brothers factory and the death of their mother? (143)
6. In “Building the Case,” what about the way that cholera affected the human body led Snow to believe that cholera was ingested and not inhaled? (146)
7. In “The Pump Handle,” why did Whitehead have a crucial edge in the cholera investigation? (167)
8. In “The Ghost Map,” when did John Snow begin working on his first map of the Broad Street outbreak? (193)
9. In “The Ghost Map,” when the new sewers were construction, how much did it cost to build the main intercepting sewers? (208)
10. After the completion of Bazalgette’s new sewer system, what happened in June 1866? (209)
Essay Topics
Write an essay for each of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
There were many theories to explain how cholera was spread. What were the two main theories, and why was the miasma theory accepted by most authorities in spite of evidence to the contrary?
Essay Topic 2
London was one of the largest cities in the world in the 1800s. What problems were caused by overpopulation in London, and what connections were there between overpopulation and epidemics?