John Snow
John "Yellow" Snow (15 March 1813 – 16 June 1858) was an English physician, amateur water enthusiast and qualified coprophiliac arguably considered most notorious for utilising his scientific curiosity as a precision dagger of death, one that would end up effectively extirpating the life of celebrated canine Broad Street pump water addict Bruce "Scooby-Poo" of Soho, London on 8 January 1856.
Although hailed as a "lifesaver" by a sparse number (read: two-and-a-half) of followers for his allegedly halting the spread of cholera, Snow is more often adjudged by his many a critic as an envious, spanner-wielding saboteur resentful of a 17-foot-tall dog who could down fifty gallons of water per nychthemeron without so much as one terse hiccough, something the Victorian town of Soho's inhabitants believed merited far more preservation than their sad, fragile little lives.
Early life[edit | edit source]
It all began when a mother let her choleraic infant shit down a well. Widely credited and blamed for contaminating the Broad Street pump's water and triggering the Great Cholera Panic of Soho is this here singular, fateful dump, now spoke of in contemporary public health folklore as the "Original Splash". Born on 15 March 1813 in a decrepit neighbourhood in York, England to a family of three squared, young John Snow, possibly that same infant, was reportedly "takin' a little trip" to London with his family when this historic event occurred.
Raised primarily in territory at an alarming risk of being inundated by the River Ouse, it was only natural for Snow to develop a quaint infatuation towards murky ditches, muddy puddles and anything vaguely wet and suspect from an early age. Miraculously, Snow himself never actually contracted cholera in spite of this obsession. This immunity, whether by luck, constitution, or an inability to have any fun whatsoever, only deepened his conviction that the plebs of Britain's fondness for a itsy-bitsy microbial kick in their dihydrogen monoxide was a sign of poor breeding and worse taste. Neighbours recalled him tutting loudly at street drinkers, occasionally muttering "Mark mi word, tha'll be givin' us a pat on t'back!"
In 1827, at the age of 14, Snow gained a diploma in Tampering Around with Cack at the prestigious Piddleford School of Dodgy Sciences, where he mastered the fine arts of minding the businesses and bodily fluids of the citizens of York, and graduated top of his class in Advanced Stallion Anus Licking Without Contracting Syphilis.
Career[edit | edit source]
Snow began his medical career in 1836 as an apprentice surgeon-apothecary in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he rapidly became known for two things: wearing an expression of perpetual constipation and an unsettling tolerance for the filthiest, brownest water the Thames could offer. Patients admired his bedside manner, which mainly consisted of telling them to "stop being poor" and then prescribing less dirty water.
Anaesthesia[edit | edit source]
By the early 1840s, Snow had slithered his way to London ostensibly to peddle his medical services but mostly to hover about hospitals and boast about knowing how to put people into stagnant sludge-induced comas. Here, he dabbled in anaesthetics, becoming one of the first to administer ether and chloroform, sometimes inducing unconsciousness that lasted longer than intended and declaring himself a pioneer on the sporadic occasion that his patients would wake up alive. When they didn't, as was with the case with one unlucky 15-year-old invalid named Hannah Greener, he typically attributed the outcome to "Darwinism, baby", before making a note to bill the valetudinarian's family for the gas.
Obstetric anaesthesia[edit | edit source]
Doctor Snow's big break came on 7 April 1853 when Queen Victoria invited him to gas her during her eighth childbirth. Snow, eager for prestige and possibly a peek at the royal undercarriage, administered his concoction with a exultant "va-va-voom". He returned in 1857 for the birth of the monarch's ninth child, which thereby allowed him to parade around the English capital clad in nothing but stained undergarments embellished with the phrase "Queen's Gas Daddy" written in black ink, a title he used with nauseating frequency for the rest of his career, especially in pubs after a few pints of suspiciously cloudy lager-lager-lager.
While peers of the realm praised him for sparing the Queen from labour pains, Snow saw it mainly as proof that his talents were wasted on the common rabble who could not afford his services, clean water or the privilege of unconsciousness at will. Surf's up, ye commoners!
Cholera[edit | edit source]
Despite these minor distractions, Snow's true passion lay in water, or to be more precise, finding new ways to hinder people from enjoying it so that he alone could smugly sip from his own private stash.
Whereas other scientists of days yore laid the blame on "miasma" (Victorian jargon for "COVID-19" and "someone farted near the bread stand") for the cholera outbreaks in town, Snow became fixated on the notion that the disease came from contaminated water seasoned with a dollop of number twos (again, possibly from Snow himself back when he was a wee sprog). Determined to rid London of its newfound favourite beverage, infantile diarrhoea, Snow took it upon himself to personally disable pumps across London, with the assistance of cartographer Charles Cheffins who was essentially kidnapped into service and forced to help map every public water fountain in the city.
Snow's theories might have remained a harmless eccentricity had fate not introduced him to his nemesis: Bruce, a celebrated 17-foot-tall canine brought in from near Westminster Abbey and the Broad Street pump's most loyal round-the-clock customer. Bruce, or "Scooby-Poo" as he is affectionately nicknamed by today's historians, could down at least fifty gallons of the stuff per day much to the awe of Soho's locals, the common consensus among whom was that the dog's hydration feats were of far more civic value than Snow's so-called science. Consumed by jealously and possibly all the lager-lager-lager he tippled at the inns as well, Snow set his sights on the pump. On 8 January 1856, he coerced the local officials to remove its handle by physically grabbing one policeman helping cordon the pump and demanding:
"D'ya know or I'll ram this stethoscope up yer missus's minge!"
The trembling officer, unsure whether to arrest Snow or run for his life, reluctantly complied. With the handle gone, Bruce was left high and dry, unable to quench his insatiable thirst for Broad Street's finest water. The mighty Great Dane collapsed within a fortnight, becoming an unintended martyr in the battle between obsessive germ-bothering and the simple human (or canine) right to chug down water until one's bladder files for bankruptcy. Attendants of Bruce's funeral which took place a month later publicly lambasted Snow for his callous sabotage, dubbing him the "Water Wrecker" and accusing him of practically murdering the one true hero of Soho's filthy streets.
Government officials were ultimately arsed to replace the Broad Street pump handle with an all-new mould seven months after Bruce's unfortunate passing, though by then the well had been so thoroughly purged of its signature faecal bouquet that locals (and one Scottish woman who was surveying the Big Smoke for the day and brought a vat full of the stuff back home) dismissed it as tasting "tasteless". The woman later tried to sell the imported sludge at the Edinburgh market as authentic London gin, but after that the damage had been done. John "Yellow" Snow had indeed triumphed, his legacy forever entwined with ruined thirsts and one very thirsty Great Dane's downfall.
Death[edit | edit source]
John Snow kicked the bucket on 16 June 1858, reportedly from a case of intracerebral haemorrhage, though esteemed Swiss historian Helmut Schmacker famously claimed that it was the "cumulative effect of spending decades bathing in semen". By the time of his death, the majority of respectable Victorian society continued to reject his theories about cholera being waterborne, preferring the tried-and-true belief that the disease was airborne instead. A major factor for this preference was the certain je ne sais quoi the word "miasma" just had to it. Polite Victorian society carried on with their lives indulging in sterile, aseptic aqua, but at what cost?
Snow's funeral's attendants consisted solely of a flock of pigeons, all of whom took the liberty of dumping their innards directly onto his rotting cadaver. The only floral tribute was a half-rotted lettuce tossed in by an old woman who was under the impression that she was feeding geese.
Legacy and honours[edit | edit source]
"Scooby-Poo" enjoyed the spoils of fame with a restaurant right next to the Broad Street pump, proudly immortalising his nickname and serving gallons of "Bruce's Best" water on tap, much to the delight of thirsty Soho residents. Snow's legacy was a trifle less ostentatious. The physician scored himself a sorry little plaque stuck behind a porta-potty in an alleyway to be admired only by rats and mice.
Aspiring Victorian scribe George R. R. Martin famously popularised the phrase "You know nothing, John Snow" in his lurid Victorian serial, dated circa 1866, Game of Thames, in which John Snow is portrayed as a brooding, cloak-wearing water inspector battling not only cholera but also envious nobles, fog so thick it could choke a horse, and endless queues at the public baths. It was only natural for Martin's literary work to become a bestseller in 19th-century British libraries but also for the phrase to evolve into a catch-all insult for anyone who couldn't figure out the difference between clean water and a bucket of piss.
