The Gateway Chronicle 2020

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amount considering it lasted less than two
years – but certainly less than the alleged
500 million who were cut down by the
same disease eight centuries later, under
the new name of The Black Death.
There was incredibly
little
medical innovation
in Europe
in the
period between
these
two catastrophic
plagues,
which can
largely be attributed to the dominance of
the Roman Catholic Church. As a sufferer
of the Black Death, which killed as many
as 60% of Europe’s
population between
1346-53, you would
largely have been
offered the same
choices as during
the Plague of Justinian.
Unless you
were rich enough to
afford a physician,
there were home
remedies and other
‘cures’, which
ranged from selfflagellation
in the
street, strapping a
live chicken to buboes
– known as the
Vicary method after
the man who invented
it – or drinking
potions laced
with mercury.
“There was incredibly little
medical innovation in Europe
in the period between these two
catastrophic plagues”
Although there was
some good news,
such as a primitive understanding
of quarantine,
significant breakthroughs in the
thought around disease and pandemics
John Snow made important discoveries about
cholera
were yet to be made, with the majority of
people – like before – blaming supernatural
causes such as God’s punishment and
the positioning of the planets.
More significant medical developments
were made centuries later,
during the Third Cholera
Pandemic, which was arguably
the most severe of the
seven global cholera pandemics
that we know of in
recorded history. Much of
this was thanks to
the work of physician John
Snow, who discovered the
connection between the disease
and contaminated water. Due to the
commonly held beliefs about miasma and
spontaneous generation, efforts were already
being made to
keep streets clean following
the Public
Health Act of 1848, but
cholera was still rampant.
By mapping the deaths
in a breakout in Soho,
Snow realised that
there was a strong concentration
round a water
pump on Broad
Street. After removing
the handle, so it could
no longer be used, the
deaths fell. He might
not have had the science
to prove it, which
was discovered a decade
or so later by Louis
Pasteur, but John Snow
knew something: that
the disease was spreading
through water, not
air. Unable to completely
prove this to the
government, the immediate
effect his findings had was limited –
other than to the people living near the
Broad Street pump – but he has