Snow embarked on a torrid stretch of inquiry: consulting with chemists who had studied the rice-water stools of cholera victims, mailing requests for information from the water and sewer authorities in Horsleydown, devouring accounts of the great epidemic of 1832. By the middle of 1849, he felt confident enough to go public with his theory. Cholera, Snow argued, was caused by some as-yet-unidentified agent that victims ingested, either through direct contact with the waste matter of other sufferers or, more likely, through drinking water that had been contaminated with that waste matter.
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