Life / Medicine

Sewers and clean water

After London's 'Great Stink' of 1858, Bazalgette's sewers and later treated water ended cholera epidemics in cities.

The stench of the Thames in the summer of 1858 pushed Parliament to fund Joseph Bazalgette's plan; from 1859 London built a network of main and street sewers with steam-driven pumping stations that carried sewage away downstream. The last big cholera outbreak in London came in 1866, and cities worldwide copied the model. Together with filtered and chlorinated drinking water, sanitation saved more lives than any drug, and it began years before germ theory explained why it worked.