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A History of Global Health xix British physician who conducted a study of cholera cases in the Soho area of Lon- don during the third cholera epidemic (1846–1860). His analysis of these cases revealed that the water from a single pump on Broad Street was the source of con- tamination. Snow’s finding that cholera was linked to contaminated water sources informed public health policy and quelled the epidemic in London. Since the nine- teenth century, the spatial mapping of disease has become a central practice in medical geography and is critical to global health. By plotting data according to space and place, medical geographers are able to determine the epicenters and parameters of outbreaks as well as local factors that exacerbate or limit contagion. Medical mapping has been critical to our understanding of modern outbreaks of disease, such as Ebola (2014–2016) and COVID-19 (2020–present). Rudolf Vir- chow (1821–1902) was a pathologist, physician, and social reformer, famous for his contributions to social medicine. His most important text in this regard is his “Report on the Typhus Epidemic in Upper Silesia.” As part of his medical analysis, Virchow detailed the horrifying conditions in which Polish laborers, an oppressed minority, were forced to live. He argued that the spread of disease was directly related to poverty and inequality and that liberation and empowerment were path- ways to better health. For Virchow, typhus was only the symptom of a greater disease—social injustice. As a remedy, he recommended that the Poles be given linguistic, political, cultural, and religious autonomy. He also argued for grassroots agricultural change, which would allow the Poles access to a diverse diet of fresh foods. While the context has changed greatly, the core beliefs of social medicine remain woven through modern global health and are reflected in the UN SDGs. TROPICAL MEDICINE AND COLONIALISM Tropical medicine emerged in the late nineteenth century and is integrally bound to Western imperialism and colonialism. Originally known as “diseases of the tropics,” tropical medicine was initially focused on diseases already known to Westerners that were believed to become more deadly when intensified by tropical heat. This area of inquiry was deemed important as more Westerners— predominantly white Europeans, Britons, and Americans—traveled to the middle latitudes and the Southern Hemisphere. By the late nineteenth century, colonial expansion saw the relocation of white settlers in Africa, Asia, South America, and the Pacific, where they were exposed to a range of new diseases not found in Northern contexts. Understanding these new diseases became a focus for medical research. In 1898, for example, Patrick Manson published his treatise, Tropical Diseases: A Manual for the Diseases of Warm Climates. The desire of predomi- nantly white scholars to understand tropical diseases, their etiology, and their pathology was not uninterested. Instead, the purpose of tropical medicine was to protect and preserve the vulnerable bodies of white settlers, thereby facilitating colonial settlement. Tropical medicine was not concerned with the study and cure of diseases in Indigenous populations, who were seen not as human beings but as natural resources for exploitation. Through the white gaze, brown bodies were constructed as environmental sources of disease and therefore dangerous to settler health. Tropical medicine promoted the segregation of white and Indigenous