into this cesspit. Its opening was under a nearby house that had been rebuilt further away after a fire and a street widening. At the time there were cesspits under most homes. Most families tried to have their raw sewage collected and dumped in the Thames to prevent their cesspit from filling faster than the sewage could decompose into the soil. At the same time, an investigation of cholera transmission was being conducted in Deptford. Around 90 people died within a few days in that town, where the water was known to be clean, and there had been no previous outbreaks of cholera. Snow was informed that the water had recently turned impure. Residents were forced to let the water run for a while before using it, in order to let the sudsy, sewer-like water run until it was clear. Snow, finding that the water the residents were using was not different from the usual water from their pump, determined that the outbreak must be caused by a leak in the pipes that allowed surrounding sewage and its contaminants to seep in to the water supply. This scenario was similar to that of the Broad Street outbreak. The incoming water was being contaminated by the increasing levels of sewage, coupled with the lack of proper and safe plumbing. After the cholera epidemic had subsided, government officials replaced the Broad Street pump handle. They had responded only to the urgent threat posed to the population, and afterwards they rejected Snow's theory. To accept his proposal would have meant indirectly accepting the oral-faecal method of transmission of disease, which was too unpleasant for most of the public to contemplate. Snow's post-outbreak evaluation Snow's analysis of cholera and cholera outbreaks extended past the closure of the Broad Street pump. He concluded that cholera was transmitted through and affected the alimentary canal within the human body. Cholera did not affect either the circulatory or the nervous system and there was no "poison in the blood...in the consecutive fever...the blood became poisoned from urea getting into the circulation". According to Snow, this "urea" entered the blood through kidney failure. (Acute kidney failure is a complication of cholera.) Therefore, the fever was caused by kidney failure, not by a poison already present in the subject's bloodstream. Popular medical practices, such as bloodletting, could not be effective in such a case. Snow also argued that cholera was