John Snow and the Broad Street Pump

And I'm Sarah. Today we're going to London, to one street, one water pump, and one very stubborn doctor.我是 Sarah。今天我们去伦敦，去一条街、一口水泵，还有一位非常固执的医生。

And he was right. So let's go back to August 1854, to a part of London called Soho.而他是对的。我们回到 1854 年 8 月，伦敦一个叫苏豪的地方。

Today, yes. In 1854 it was crowded. Big old houses had been cut into small flats, sometimes 50 people in one building. There were slaughterhouses, cowsheds, and no proper sewers.现在是。1854 年那里非常挤。老旧的大房子被隔成小公寓，有时一栋楼住 50 个人。那里有屠宰场、牛棚，而且没有真正的下水道。

Into holes under the houses. Cesspools. And when those holes were full, they leaked.流到房子下面的坑里，污水坑。坑满了就往外渗。

Exactly. They called it miasma. Bad air from rotting things. So if your street smelled terrible, that explained the disease. Clean the smell, you clean the sickness.没错。他们管这叫瘴气。腐烂物产生的坏空气。所以只要你那条街味道难闻，病的原因就解释了。把味道清掉，病就清掉了。

On August 31, people in Soho started getting very sick. Terrible stomach illness. By the end of the first three days, 127 people were dead.8 月 31 日，苏豪的人开始病得很重。严重的肠道病。头三天结束时，127 个人死了。

And within a week, three quarters of the people who could leave had left. Doors locked, streets empty.一周之内，能走的人里四分之三都走了。门锁着，街上空了。

A London doctor. And here's the strange part: he was famous, but not for this. He was one of the best in the world at anaesthesia. He helped people sleep through surgery.一位伦敦医生。奇怪的地方在于：他很有名，但不是因为这个。他是世界上最好的麻醉师之一。他帮人在手术中睡过去。

And he was a quiet, careful person who wrote everything down. Numbers, addresses, dates. He liked proof.他也是个安静、仔细的人，什么都记下来。数字、地址、日期。他喜欢证据。

Because he had noticed something. Cholera doesn't begin with a headache or a fever. It begins in the stomach. If something in the air causes it, why does it always start in your stomach?因为他注意过一件事。霍乱不是从头疼或发烧开始的，它从肚子开始。如果是空气里的东西引起的，为什么总是从肚子开始？

He had asked it five years earlier, and written a small book about it. Almost nobody read it.他五年前就问过了，还为此写了一本小书。几乎没人读。

He got the list of everyone who had died from the city's death records. Then he walked to every address with a map of the streets.他从城市的死亡登记处拿到了所有死者的名单。然后拿着街区地图，走到每一个地址。

Hundreds. He marked every death with a small line on the map. One line, one person.几百个。他在地图上用一条小线标记每一个死者。一条线，一个人。

Almost all the lines were in one place. Around a single water pump in Broad Street.几乎所有的线都在一个地方。围着宽街上的一口水泵。

That was how most people got water. There was no tap in the house. You walked to the pump with a bucket.当时大多数人就是这么取水的。家里没有水龙头。你提着桶走到水泵那儿。

That's the smart question. And here's where the story gets good, because Snow didn't stop with the deaths. He went looking for the people who should have died and didn't.这问题问得聪明。故事最好听的地方就在这儿，因为斯诺没停在死者身上。他去找那些本该死了、却没死的人。

Or the ones whose story didn't fit. There was a workhouse on Poland Street, right in the middle of the worst area. 535 people lived there. Only 5 died.或者那些故事对不上的人。波兰街有一所济贫院，就在最严重那片区域的正中间。535 个人住在里面。只死了 5 个。

Because the workhouse had its own well. They never drank from Broad Street.因为济贫院有自己的井。他们从不喝宽街的水。

Then look at the brewery. The Lion Brewery was on Broad Street itself, with more than 70 men working there. Not one case of cholera.那看那家啤酒厂。狮子啤酒厂就在宽街上，70 多个男工在那里干活。一个霍乱病例都没有。

Not one. When Snow asked why, the owner said his workers got free beer every day. And the water used for brewing was boiled.一个都没有。斯诺问为什么，老板说他工人每天有免费啤酒。而且酿酒用的水是煮开的。

And the water they did use was boiled, which, as we now know, kills the bacteria. Nobody knew that in 1854. Back then it just looked like a very lucky brewery.而他们用到的水是煮开的，我们现在知道，这样能杀死细菌。1854 年没人知道这一点。当时看起来只是一家运气特别好的啤酒厂。

Snow felt the same. So he went looking for the case that air could not explain.斯诺也是这么想的。所以他去找一个"空气"解释不了的例子。

A woman who lived in Hampstead. That's a few miles away, up the hill, clean air, no cholera in her street.一位住在汉普斯特德的女士。那在几英里外，在山上，空气干净，她那条街没有霍乱。

She died of cholera. Because she loved the taste of Broad Street water. She had it carried to her house.她死于霍乱。因为她喜欢宽街水的味道。她让人把水运到她家。

And she wasn't the only one. There was another woman in Islington, same story. Snow found those two cases and must have felt that he had solved it.她还不是唯一一个。伊斯灵顿还有一位女士，同样的故事。斯诺找到这两个病例，想必觉得自己破案了。

On the evening of September 7, he stood in front of the parish board and laid out everything. The map, the workhouse, the brewery, the two women. He asked them to shut the pump.9 月 7 日晚上，他站在教区委员会面前，把所有东西都摆了出来。地图、济贫院、啤酒厂、那两位女士。他请他们关掉那口井。

No. They thought he was wrong. But they had no better idea, and people were still dying, so they said fine.没有。他们觉得他错了。但他们也没有更好的办法，而且人还在死，所以他们说，行吧。

The next morning, September 8, a workman walked over and took the handle off the pump. That's all. No medicine, no soldiers, no long speech. Just a handle in a toolbox.第二天早上，9 月 8 日，一个工人走过去，把水泵的把手卸了下来。就这样。没有药，没有军队，没有长篇演讲。就是一个把手进了工具箱。

Not exactly. And this is the part I find most interesting. The outbreak was already going down before the handle came off. Most people who could run had run.不完全是。这是我觉得最有意思的部分。把手卸掉之前，疫情已经在下降了。能跑的人大多跑了。

That's what many historians say. The handle probably didn't stop the first wave. It may have stopped a second one.很多历史学家就是这么说的。那个把手很可能没挡住第一波。它可能挡住了第二波。

Because of what it proved. For the first time, a city looked at evidence and made a decision. Not a feeling, not a smell, not a tradition. A map.因为它证明了什么。这是第一次，一座城市看着证据做决定。不是凭感觉，不是凭气味，不是凭传统。是凭一张地图。

Years later, a local priest named Henry Whitehead did the digging. He started out as a sceptic and wanted to prove Snow wrong.几年后，一位叫亨利·怀特海德的本地牧师做了深入调查。他一开始是怀疑者，想证明斯诺错了。

He found the answer anyway. There was a baby at number 40 Broad Street, five months old. She got sick on August 28 and died a few days later.结果他还是找到了答案。宽街 40 号有一个五个月大的女婴。她 8 月 28 日生病，几天后死了。

Her mother washed the baby's cloths and threw the dirty water into the cesspool in front of the house. That cesspool sat about three feet from the well under the pump.她母亲洗了婴儿的尿布，把脏水倒进房前的污水坑。那个污水坑离水泵下面的井大约三英尺。

The bricks were cracked. The waste went through. And the baby's father, a policeman, fell ill on September 8, the very day the handle came off.砖裂了。脏水渗了过去。而婴儿的父亲，一名警察，在 9 月 8 日发病，就是把手被卸掉的那天。

It is. He died eleven days later.是的。他十一天后去世了。

Mostly no. The official report that year still blamed the air. Snow died in 1858, at 44. The bacterium that causes cholera was found in the 1880s, long after he was gone.大多没有。那一年的官方报告还在怪空气。斯诺 1858 年去世，44 岁。引起霍乱的细菌要到 1880 年代才被发现，那时他早已不在。

Never. He only ever saw a pattern on a map.始终没有。他看到的，只是地图上的一个图案。

You have. Some records say about 420. Most say more than 600 in that small area. The first count was probably too low, because people who ran away died somewhere else and were counted somewhere else.你看到过。有些记录说大约 420 人。多数说法是那片小区域里死了 600 多人。最早的统计大概偏低，因为跑掉的人在别处死，也就在别处被算进去了。

And the street itself you can still visit.而那条街本身，你现在还能去。

It's called Broadwick Street now, and there's a copy of the pump, built to remember him. And there's a pub across the road.它现在叫布罗德威克街，那儿有一座水泵复制品，建来纪念他。街对面还有一家酒吧。

It is. And people go there to drink. Mostly beer.对。人们去那儿喝东西。主要是啤酒。

So next time you turn on a tap and don't think about it, remember this. Someone once had to knock on a few hundred doors to make that normal.所以下次你拧开水龙头、什么都不想的时候，记住这件事。曾经有人挨家敲了几百扇门，才让这一切变得平常。