BEER DRINKING PREVENTING DEATHS FROM CHOLERA
Let’s take a step backwards to around 1831 in Britain when a creeping, deadly disease knocked on the doors of people of Britain. It took its victims one by one and rapidly spread, killing approximately a total of 7000 people between 1831 and 1832. Nobody knew how the disease started or what the disease was, all people knew were the symptoms and the masses of bodies that needed to be buried.
The recognised symtoms were: severe diarrhea which increased and became accompanied by painful gut cramps, extreme thirst and dehydration; sever pain in the limbs, stomach, and abdominal muscles; a change skin colour which left bodies bluish-grey.
Twenty three years later after four more outbreaks, a much larger epidemic broke out in London which spread in areas of, Soho, St. Ann's, Southwark and Lambeth then on to Broad Street and Golden-square, where 500 people died in the space of three months. It was the worst that Britain had seen of Cholera. Life was a dreaded nightmare, people fled their homes and the streets and houses were filled with the stifling smells of the dead and the odors of the disease.
It was Dr Snow who recognized and confirmed that the disease Cholera was spread from contamination of water when he noticed that most of the victims that had died all had drunk the water from the Broad Street pump.
In Poland Street workhouse (which was near the Broad Street Pump) only five of the inmates caught the disease and the rest of the 70 inmates survived. Dr Snow proved that the reason for this was that they had all been drinking the free beer that was an allowance given to them everyday and never touched the water from the pump.