Ironically, just a few days before Snow had unsuccessfully attempted to see any telltale signs of cholera in the water, an Italian scientist at the University of Florence had discovered a small, comma-shaped organism in the intestinal mucosa of a cholera victim. It was the first recorded sighting of Vibrio cholerae, and Filippo Pacini published a paper that year describing his findings, under the title “Microscopical Observations and Pathological Deductions on Cholera.”
