Pumphandle Lecture

Pumphandle Lecture

Broad Street pump and John Snow pub
Founder	Paul Fine
Established	1993
Owner	John Snow Society
Location	London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine , London , UK

The Pumphandle Lecture, established in 1993, is an annual lecture held around September to celebrate the removal of the Broad Street pump handle that took place in September 1854 during the cholera epidemic in Soho. It is organised by the John Snow Society, named for John Snow, and takes place at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Following the lecture the speaker performs a ceremonial removal and replacement of the pump handle and members proceed to the John Snow pub. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

History

The Pumphandle Lecture was established in 1993 by the John Snow Society, named for John Snow, to celebrate the removal of the Broad Street pump handle that took place in September 1854 during the cholera epidemic in Soho. ^[1] It is held every year around September. ^[4]

The inaugural lecture was delivered by Nick Ward and chaired by Paul Fine. ^[1]

Lectures

List of speakers

Year	Image	Speaker	Nationality	Title	Notes
1993		Nick Ward	United Kingdom	"Global Polio Eradication – a call for action"	[1]
1994		Spence Galbraith	United Kingdom	"Dr John Snow – Early Life and Later Triumphs"	[5]
1995		Sandy Cairncross	United Kingdom	"Turning the Worm – The Guinea Worm eradication programme"	[6]
1996		Richard Feachem	United Kingdom  United States	"Would John Snow have joined the world bank?"	[7]
1997		Hugh Pennington	United Kingdom	"E. coli in Scotland – the relevance of John Snow and William Whewell’s consilience of induction"	[8]
1998		Richard J. Evans	United Kingdom	"Koch, Pettenkofer and the search for the cause of cholera"
1999		Chris Bartlett	United Kingdom	"Removing the pump handle at an international level"
2000		John Oxford	United Kingdom	"The search for permafrost and other victims of the 1918 Influenza"
2001		David Bradley		"John Snow in the world of today"
2002		David Salisbury		"Managing vaccine adverse effects"
2003		Mike Ryan	Ireland	"Epidemics in the 21st Century, the lesson of SARS"
2004		Alain Moren		"Challenges for field epidemiology training in a widening Europe"
2005		Tore Godal		"Everything is Impossible until it has been done"	[9]
2006		Jamie Bartram	United Kingdom	"Drinking Water - Where Science Meets Policy"	[10]
2007		Donald Henderson	United States	"Polio Eradication, a reconsideration of strategy"	[11]
2008		Patrick Wall	Ireland	"Food Safety – Media based or Risk Based controls?"
2009		David L. Heymann	United States	"When Nature turns cook – The epidemiologist’s feast"
2010		David Nabarro	United Kingdom	"Sapiens, Synergy, Solidarite, Success"	[12]
2011		Hans Rosling	Sweden	"Epidemiology for the Bottom Billion – where there is not even a pump handle to remove!"	[13] [14]
2012		Tom Frieden	United States	"What pump handles need to be removed to save the most lives in this century?	[15]
2013		Julie Cliff	Australia	"From London to Mozambique, from cholera to konzo"	[16]
2014		Jeremy Farrar	United Kingdom	"Medicine and public health: divorced for too long"	[12]
2015		Atul Gawande	United States	"On removing the pumphandle: innovation and implementation"
2016		Paul B. Spiegel	Canada	"The Syrian conflict and its effect on the future of humanitarian response: We need a new pumphandle"
2017		Richard Horton	United Kingdom	"Life and Death in 2100: Health, History and Human Contingency"
2018		Joanne Liu	Canada	"The Cost of Fear: Humanitarian Crises in the Age of Anxiety"
2019		Eliza Manningham-Buller	United Kingdom	"Promoting Medical Science in an Age of Scepticism"
2020		John Nkengasong	Cameroon  United States	"Africa CDC: A New Public Health Order"	[12]
2021		Anthony Fauci	United States	"COVID-19: Lessons Learned and Remaining Challenges"	[12]
2022		Andrew Haines	United Kingdom	"The imperative of climate action for health"
2023		Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala	Nigeria  United States	"Global health equity and the role of trade"	[12] [17]
2024		Soumya Swaminathan	India	“Pandemics, Climate Change and the Role of Science”	[18]
2025		Cesar Victora	Brazil		[19]

References

1. "1993 Dr Nick Ward: Global Polio Eradication – a call for action". The John Snow Society. 9 September 1993. Archived from the original on 26 October 2023. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
2. "Pumphandle lectures Archives". The John Snow Society. 20 October 2023. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
3. Horton, Richard (February 2022). "Offline: A lie at the heart of public health" . The Lancet. 399 (10326): 704. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00312-9. PMID   35183286. S2CID   246906609.
4. Ramsay, Michael A. E. (January 2006). "John Snow, MD: anaesthetist to the Queen of England and pioneer epidemiologist". Proceedings (Baylor University. Medical Center). 19 (1): 24–28. doi:10.1080/08998280.2006.11928120. ISSN   0899-8280. PMC   1325279 . PMID   16424928.
5. Stanwell-Smith, Rosalind (December 2003). "Cholera, Chloroform, and the Science of Medicine: a Life of John Snow". Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 96 (12): 612–613. ISSN   0141-0768. PMC   539667 .
6. "1995 Dr Sandy Cairncross: Turning the Worm – The Guinea Worm eradication programme". The John Snow Society. 9 September 1995. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
7. Communicable Disease Report: CDR weekly. PHLS Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre. 1996. p. 314.
8. Communicable Disease Report: CDR weekly. PHLS Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre. 1997. p. 286.
9. Parslow, Graham R. (May 2006). "Websites of note" . Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education. 34 (3): 232–234. doi:10.1002/bmb.2006.49403403232. ISSN   1470-8175. PMID   21638683. S2CID   39499985.
10. "Jamie Bartram (CV)" (PDF). sph.unc.edu. Retrieved 18 November 2023.
11. "2007 D A Henderson: Polio Eradication, a reconsideration of strategy". The John Snow Society. 9 September 2007. Retrieved 18 August 2024.
12. Okonjo-Iweala, DG. "Global Health Equity and the Role of Trade". www.wto.org. World Trade Organization. Retrieved 18 November 2023.
13. Schneider, Dona; Lilienfeld, David E.; Lilienfeld, Abraham M. (2015). "Part II. Descriptive studies". Lilienfeld's Foundations of Epidemiology (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 72. ISBN   978-0-19-537767-5.
14. "Pumphandle Lecture". epimonitor.net. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
15. Cahill, Anne-Taylor (1 January 2018). "Dr. Snow and the Blue Death". Nineteenth Century. 38 (2).
16. "John Snow Society Pumphandle lecture and AGM 2013". www.rsph.org.uk. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
17. "Pumphandle Lecture 2023: Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala | LSHTM". www.lshtm.ac.uk. 31 October 2023. Archived from the original on 28 October 2023. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
18. "2024 Broadsheet now available to read". The John Snow Society. 15 August 2024. Retrieved 19 August 2024.
19. "Pumphandle Lecture 2025: Dr Cesar Victora | LSHTM". www.lshtm.ac.uk. 23 October 2025. Retrieved 18 October 2025.