Snow, John (1813-1858)

British anaesthetist and epidemiologist. He was the first specialist anaesthetist; before the introduction of chloroform he administered ether 152 times, but from 1847-58 he administered chloroform 4,000 times. Queen Victoria received her first anaesthetic from Snow on 7 April 1853, at the birth of Prince Leopold. Snow wrote his distinguished book On Ether, in 1847; his division of the stages of anaesthesia into five degrees was not improved upon for seventy years. His On Chloroform and other Anaesthetics (1858) is a classic of anaesthesiology. He invented a chloroform inhaler in 1848.

Snow was born in York, England. After serving as an apprentice to a Newcastle upon Tyne surgeon, Snow studied at the Great Windmill Street School and at the Westminster Hospital, both in London, England. He qualified in 1838 and became an MD in 1844. Snow was also interested in public health; by statistical and other investigations he proved in 1849 that cholera was transmitted by water infected with faecal matter. His book On the Mode of Communication of Cholera first appeared in that year; its second edition of 1855 is more important, however, and recorded that the outbreak in Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) in Soho, London, was due to contamination by sewage of the pump there. The site of the pump is now occupied by a public-house, renamed The John Snow.