Q 01/05

John Snow pinned London's deadly 1854 cholera outbreak on which source on Broad Street in Soho?

A) A slaughterhouse

B) A water pump

C) A brewery

D) A workhouse

Answer · why

B) A water pump

A water pump on Broad Street was the source, and the parish disabled it by taking off the handle. Workers at the nearby brewery, who drank their beer ...

Q 02/05

Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, infected dozens of New Yorkers while working in which job?

A) Cook

B) Nurse

C) Nanny

D) Maid

Answer · why

A) Cook

Cook to a string of wealthy families, Mallon carried typhoid without ever falling ill herself. She was forcibly quarantined in a hospital on New York'...

Q 03/05

The 1918 flu pandemic was nicknamed after which neutral country, whose uncensored newspapers reported it freely?

A) Sweden

B) Denmark

C) Spain

D) Norway

Answer · why

C) Spain

Spain stayed out of World War I, so its press covered the outbreak while the warring nations censored the news. That made Spain look like the epicentr...

Q 04/05

The word vaccine comes from the Latin for which farm animal, thanks to Edward Jenner's 1796 experiment?

A) Pig

B) Goat

C) Sheep

D) Cow

Answer · why

D) Cow

Cow is 'vacca' in Latin, and Jenner's vaccine used cowpox, a mild infection caught from cattle, to guard against smallpox. His first subject was James...

Q 05/05

Quarantine takes its name from a Venetian word for how many days that plague-era ships had to wait in isolation?

A) 10

B) 20

C) 40

D) 80

Answer · why

C) 40

40 days was the 'quarantena' that ships sat out before anyone could go ashore during the Black Death. It followed a 30-day isolation first imposed in ...