Vinten-Johansen Peter et al. Cholera, Chloroform, and the Science of Medicine: A Life of John Snow

Oxford University Press, 2003. — 454 p. — ISBN: 0-19-513544-X.This book is the product of an ongoing scholarly collaboration among five professors at Michigan State University who share an inordinate interest in the life and work of an early Victorian physician, John Snow. Early on someone tagged us with a mildly embarrassing nickname, “The Snowflakes,” which stuck. Harmony does not always reign among five men with varied training and scholarly expertise: a European intellectual historian (Peter Vinten-Johansen), a philosopher–MD (Howard Brody), an epidemiologist–MD (Nigel Paneth), an American literary and cultural historian (Stephen Rachman), and a medical geographer–epidemiologist (Michael Rip). We began this project with very different views of Snow’s writings and his significance in the history of medicine. Because we all agreed that his investigations during the 1854 cholera epidemic in London constituted a singular achievement, our initial intent was to feature that incident in a relatively brief biographical study. Several jointly crafted articles and presentations shaped our collective sense of Snow. In the process, however, we came to believe that only an extensive, interdisciplinary biography would do him justice.