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Why wait for Game of Thrones to find out what happened to John Snow? He's seeking the truth on Extra History right now!

Update! We had to fix the end credits so there's a new link. If you left a comment before, sorry!

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England: The Broad Street Pump - I: You Know Nothing, John Snow - Extra History

Support us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon Watch the Broad Street Pump series! http://bit.ly/1NRSAsL Subscribe for new episodes every Saturday! http://bit.ly/SubToEC Play games with us on Extra Play! http://bit.ly/WatchEXP Talk to us on Twitter (@ExtraCreditz): http://bit.ly/ECTweet Follow us on Facebook: http://bit.ly/ECFBPage Get our list of recommended games on Steam: http://bit.ly/ECCurator ____________ Thanks to his mother's support, John Snow rose from humble beginnings as a coal miner's son and apprenticed to a doctor in Newcastle. As a young man, he treated many patients during the cholera epidemic that struck Newcastle. He noticed that the traditional explanation for cholera's spread - miasma from graveyards and swamps - could not explain its appearance in Newcastle where he treated patients. He took that knowledge with him to London, where he formally studied medicine and achieved the highest honors in his profession in only a year. His formal study of anesthesia earned him such great recognition that on two occasions he was trusted to work on the Queen. But then cholera broke out in London again. Snow wanted to prove miasma didn't cause it and find the real cause, so he interviewed patients and doctors across the city. He theorized that the diarrhea which came from cholera also helped to spread it. He even wrote up a case study where one street whose well water mixed with sewage had a huge infection rate while across the street their neighbors with pure well water barely suffered at all. Confident that he had found the cause, he published his findings, but the medical community was not thoroughly convinced. ____________ Get the intro music here! http://bit.ly/1EQA5N7 *Music by Demetori: http://bit.ly/1AaJG4H Get the outro music here! http://bit.ly/1iYzuEx *Music by Sean and Dean Kiner: http://bit.ly/1LBy9zh __________ Extra History - Warring States Japan: Sengoku Jidai Battle of Okehazama: http://bit.ly/1IUpYw2 Extra Credits - What Type of Player are You? Bartle's Taxonomy: http://bit.ly/1LSrtIx

Comments

Anonymous

This is a story I alread read a lot about. Great choice!!

ExtraCredits

I'm actually a bit surprised by how many people had already heard of it, but I think it's awesome that so many have! Hope you enjoy the series!

Anonymous

Great first episode! Although you forgot to put up the new credits for this week. It still says the "Drums of War" where "Broad Street Pump" should be.

Anonymous

Will Ignaz Semmelweis be making an appearance this series?

Anonymous

Interesting story about how much Cholera remains feared and respected: On the Stranmillis Road in Belfast, right next to the Ulster Museum, is Friar's Bush Graveyard. It dates back to the 14th Century and has all sorts of intersting stories, such as the infamous Burke and Hare applying their "trade" there, but what's important is that it's where victims of a Cholera outbreak contemporaneous to the Newcastle outbreak were buried, in the sort of mass grave you associate with the Black Death. A few years ago there was talk of widening the street - it is pretty narrow, especially at the Museum - but they abandoned the plans for fear of having to move the graves and sparking a Cholera outbreak.

Anonymous

Glad to see a story about early science/medicine. I like history, but science will always be my first love.

Anonymous

Interesting story. Reminds me of Ignaz Semmelweis. I hope John Snow's ultimate fate was better than Ignaz's or his counterpart from the book :) .

Anonymous

Learned about this in History nearly a decade ago and it still resonates with me, probably because it crosses into science. The ridicule that Snow recieved after he repeativly showcases the evidence is boggling but still apparent in society today. If my mind remembers right things get bad before they get better in this story.

Anonymous

Great new series... I'm loving that we get lots of Extra History so quickly now... makes me glad I'm a Patreon! Keep up the great work! I didnt like history in school but dare I say it, Extra History has outstripped Extra Credits for me now (and I'm a game designer!) :)

Anonymous

PS: Please put The Irish Famine on the list of possibles! It had such a huge impact not just in Ireland but on America too!

Anonymous

I love the wide variety of history Extra History is covering. I never even heard of the Broad Street Pump before. But, now I'm very interested in seeing what happens next. Keep up the good work.

Farzad Mansouri

Can John catch a bloody break, please?! Fascinating I didn't know about this stuff and it's awe-inspiring.

Anonymous

Almost reaching 14K funds. This has worked out quite nicely with John Snow. I'll link to this episode whenever I see the reference used.

Anonymous

I bet Walpole invented Cholera....

Aldo de Leeuw

Awesome! I'm very keen to see the rest of it :D I've recently watched a documentary about the same issue in Amsterdam around 1850, dr Samuel Sarphati eventually managed to convince the city counsel to build pipelines for fresh water, which saved a lot of people. Before Sarphati they would throw feces, garbage and corpses in the canals...and get their drink water from it D: (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Sarphati)" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Sarphati)</a>

Anonymous

FANTASTIC episode! I love the little opener, and again, the art is so snappy and well-paced and -edited that it looks like animation at times. It must have been a staggering amount of work! SO looking forward to the rest of this series. :D :D :D

Anonymous

I admit, I forgot that history is more than just war and battles and this episode prove that you don't need to be a brilliant tactician or adept commander to leave a mark on history. Glad to see variety of EH.

The Cayute

He. Doctored. For the fucking. QUEEN! I'm pretty damned sure if you guys are willing to let him put her to sleep he knows something!!!! It sometimes pisses me off how damned RECENT alot of our understanding of medical science is while alot of 'doctoring' hadn't yet changed since the sword was the prevalent weapon.

Anonymous

Oh how ignorant and closed minded people can be, always thinking that the current mindset is right and never exploring outside the box, this is ever so common in history.

Anonymous

Those in the establishment of academics are loathed to be challenged by an upstart. Sadly, not much has changed in that regard.

Øyvind Wallentinsen

I love how you put the obvious Song of Ice and Fire reference right in the title of the video xD

Øyvind Wallentinsen

One street is a very small statistical sample, and correlation doesn't equal causation. Our dear Snow didn't really have as solid proof as he believed himself.

Øyvind Wallentinsen

It's not about knowing something, it's about proving it -- he didn't have evidence in episode 1 beyond one single street.

ExtraCredits

Hey folks! We had to fix the end credits so there is now a brand new video link. If you left any comments before, I'm afraid they've been lost!

ExtraCredits

It's also a little sad to think of all those poor cholera sufferers being thrown into a mass grave.

ExtraCredits

I've loved the history of sciences ever since a high school chemistry teacher (recognizing that I was very into reading) realized he could get me to learn the lessons by loaning me a history of chemistry textbook. HOOKED. -Soraya

ExtraCredits

Spoiler alert (but it won't be in this series anyway): this John Snow died fairly young, but he had a pretty successful and happy life.

ExtraCredits

So if we reference it multiple times an episode, does that mean you'll have to link to the same episode multiple times?

ExtraCredits

We don't talk about Sarphati specifically but we are going to talk about sanitation in this series! It's kind of amazing what people were willing to put up with in the cities... and makes you wonder how much people in a hundred years will look back on us today and just go "Really? They let that happen?"

ExtraCredits

Dan got to practice some acting chops in that opening! And Lil is doing a FANTASTIC job; we are so lucky to have found her.

ExtraCredits

War gets the most coverage in history texts since it's so easy to glorify, but we're hoping to tell a lot more of the non-war stories!

Anonymous

I love this series already! I'm curious though, why did the medic establishment reject his findings? Hadn't the scientific method been around for several hundred years by this point?

Anonymous

It's the trap of one of our cognitive shortcuts: The human mind is great at making shortcuts to speed up mental processing of situations, but nuance and flexibility can be lost. It's easy to take a popular theory and treat it as axiomatic, even great scientists can fall into this trap. And then when something completely different appears it's really difficult to reorient your mindset to consider it. A possible recent example is the shift away from concern about fat in diet to carbs in diet. And the thing is that miasma, the prevalent theory of the day, was arrived from observation and reasoning. It wasn't like the humours, though some still believed in those even in John Snow's day, it was an evidence backed theory. I'd go so far as to say it's less "wrong" as it is "incomplete", because it's undermined by the assumption that only foul odours can transmit disease. But public health measures based on it worked for the most part. A filthy smelly street is disease ridden. Clean it up, disease rates drop. QED! The hurdle John Snow had to clear to gain acceptance was that he could only show the "what" and "when" of cholera, and the "what" and "when" were just familiar enough to miasma's as to invite skepticism. What would have sealed the deal would be showing the "how" and "why". But it would take Louis Pasteur to give medicine the tools to uncover the "how" and "why".

Anonymous

After Admeral Yi I was hoping that we would have a character that others actually believed. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Anonymous

The fellow giving the lecture at the beginning of the episode kind of sounds like the Ice King.

Anonymous

I love this whole series so much that I feel like Team Extra Credits should lock themselves in a dungeon and churn out new episodes every day. Can't get enough! Great stuff guys!