William Budd


William Budd was an English physician and epidemiologist known for recognizing that infectious diseases were contagious. He recognized that the "poisons" involved in infectious diseases multiplied in the intestines of the sick, were present in their leaks, and could then be transmitted to the healthy through their consumption of contaminated water.
He particularly understood this about the transmission of cholera and typhoid fever.

Early life and education

William Budd was born in 1811 at North Tawton, Devon to an English surgeon, Samuel Budd, and his wife Catherine Wreford. He graduated MBChB from the University of Edinburgh in 1838. Six of his nine brothers, including George Budd, also went into medicine.

Career

In 1841 Budd moved to Bristol, where he started a practice as a surgeon. He became physician to St. Peter's Hospital in 1842, and to the Bristol Royal Infirmary in 1847.
Using his theory and reading John Snow's essay about cholera in London, Budd took measures to protect the Bristol's water supply. He announced the importance of the work of two Bristol colleagues, Frederick Brittan and Joseph Griffiths Swayne, of organisms in the "rice-water evacuations" of cholera victims. The work of Brittan and Swayne was disregarded at the time, when the miasma theory of infections from the air prevailed. Budd, on the other hand, is credited with decreasing the incidence of deaths in Bristol from cholera, from 2000 in 1849 to 29 in 1866.
Budd's obituary is found in the Lancet 1880;i: 148. Part of William Budd's archive is held at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Selected works