John Snow: Anaesthetist to a Queen and Epidemiologist to a Nation

David A E Shephard York Point Publishing, P O Box 843 Cornwall, PE, Canada COA 2HO, pounds sterling15, pp 347 ISBN 1 57087 103 5

David Shephard's heroic account of the Yorkshire lad, dedicated to vegetarianism and temperance, who ultimately gave Victoria “that blessed chloroform” provides us with new insights into the man who did not actually remove the handle of the Broad Street pump. Shephard aims to portray Snow as a “complete physician” by showing how he linked his clinical practice to both laboratory and epidemiological scientific research.

Snow's attraction to the novel practice of anaesthesia in the 1840s was …