Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1789.5

JOHN SNOW (1813-1858) On the inhalation of the vapour of ether in surgical operations: containing a description of the various stages of etherization, and a statement of the result of nearly eighty operations in which ether has been employed in St. George’s and University college hospitals. J. Churchill 1847 viii, 88 p. ill.

John Snow was an English physician and a leader in the adoption of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered to be one of the fathers of epidemiology, because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, England, in 1854. In 1837, Snow began working at the Westminster Hospital, admitted as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 2 May 1838, he graduated from the University of London in December 1844 and was admitted to the Royal College of Physicians in 1850. In 1857, he made an early and overlooked contribution to epidemiology in a little-known pamphlet : On the adulteration of bread as a cause of rickets. John Snow was one of the first physicians to study and calculate dosages for the use of ether and chloroform as surgical anaesthetics, allowing patients to undergo surgical procedures without the distress and pain they would otherwise experience. He personally administered chloroform to Queen Victoria when she gave birth to the last two of her nine children, Leopold in 1853 and Beatrice in 1857, leading to wider public acceptance of obstetric anaesthesia. Snow published an article on ether in 1847 entitled On the Inhalation of the Vapor of Ether. A bigger, longer work was published posthumously in 1858 entitled On Chloroform and Other Anaesthetics, and Their Action and Administration.

Cited references: Garrison & Morton #5658

John Martin M.D. Endowment