science · 14 September 1811 · 213 years ago
birth
Born 14 Sep 1811; died 9 Jan 1880 at age 68.
English physician who followed his father and five of his brothers into the medical profession. He earned his M.D. degree at the University of Edinburgh (1838). From 1841, he practiced in Bristol. At a time before Pasteur's knowledge of microorganisms, Budd recognized that the contagious disease was related to unidentified poisons that multiplied in the intestines and were passed in excretions. In On Malignant Cholera (1849), he warned that disease was transmitted when excretions contaminated drinking water. He was inspired by the similar work of John Snow in London. With a regimen to protect Bristol's water supply from such contamination, in 1866, Budd was able to curb the epidemic spread of cholera. He studied other communicable diseases, including diptheria, scarlet fever, rinderpest and TB.
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