When Nature turns cook: An epidemiological feast: Report of the John Snow Society Pumphandle Lecture 2009, delivered by Dr David Heymann

The 17th annual Pumphandle Lecture was held appropriately on 8th September 2009: in 1854 on this day, the pump handle was removed from the Broad Street pump and an enduring symbol of public health intervention was born. Public health needs such anniversaries and the hero of the 1854 cholera outbreak, Dr John Snow, might also have appreciated that the main lecture theatre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has been named after him. There was a full house in the lecture theatre to hear Dr David Heymann reflect on his epidemiological experience over three decades, helping to solve and control outbreaks from China to Zaire and from Ebola virus to ‘Swine Flu’. Following a career with CDC and then WHO, where he became Assistant Director General, Dr Heymann is currently the Chair of the Health Protection Agency in England and Head of the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, London.