On account of its size and lack of sanitary provisions, the London of that period was the kind of place in which, with our present knowledge of disease, we would expect a plague to reach its height. Prior to 1700, the city of London had no sewers and was without water supply, except such as was obtained from wells and springs in the neighborhood. The subsoil of London we can readily believe was foul from cesspool leachings and from slops and household refuse deposited on the surface of the ground, so that water from the wells within the city limits, while cool perhaps and palatable, could not have been wholesome. Many public wells with pumps had been installed at certain intervals on the public highways, and an epidemic of cholera traced to one of these wells, was the means of pointing out the danger to public health, caused by an infected water supply, and of showing the channel by which the infectious matter from people suffering from intestinal diseases was transmitted to healthy individuals. The story is well told by Sedgwick:[5] "One of the earliest, one of the most famous, and one of the most instructive cases of the conveyance of disease by polluted water, is that commonly known as the epidemic of Asiatic cholera connected with the Broad Street, London, well, which occurred in 1854. For its conspicuously circumscribed character, its violence and fatality, and especially for the remarkable skill, thoroughness and success with which it was investigated, it will long remain one of the classical instances of the terrible efficiency of polluted water as a vehicle of disease. [Illustration: _ASIATIC CHOLERA_ - AND - _THE BROAD STREET PUMP_. _LONDON 1854._] As a monument of sanitary research, of medical and engineering interest and of penetrating inductive reasoning, it deserves the most careful study. No apology therefore need be made for giving of it here a somewhat extended account.[6] The parish of St. James, London, occupied 164 acres in 1854, and contained 36,406 inhabitants in 1851. It was subdivided into three subdistricts, viz., those of St. James Square, Golden Square and Berwick Street. As will be seen by the map, it was situated near a part of London now well known to travellers, not far from the junction of Regent and Oxford Streets. It was bounded by Mayfair and Hanover Square on the west, by All Souls and Marylbone on the north, St. Anne's and Soho on the east, and Charing Cross and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields on the east and south.