Oxford now has its own Broad Street pump. The installation of a public bicycle pump on the Broad is not particularly glamorous but it represents the culmination of a Cyclox initiative to have this most useful item of cycling infrastructure freely and permanently available right in the centre of the city.

This project has come to fruition thanks to the support of Freeths, the legal firm, who helped with the purchase cost, and the city council, who helped with all the practical and the technical aspects of bolting something to the public highway.

This pump was the stimulus for the city council to install four other pumps across the city.

Now anyone who uses a bike in and around the city centre will have a pump readily available around the clock.

You can find it near the kerb outside the Visitor Information Centre and it should be able to handle any valve you might have on your bike.

It will also serve as a handy meeting point: “I’ll see you at the pump” will soon enter the Oxford vernacular.

For Oxford’s many medics and public health professionals, the concept of the Broad Street pump has a far deeper resonance than just a useful tool to get free air into your tyres.

On August 31, 1854 – 163 years ago last week – cholera began to spread among the people living around Golden Square in Soho, London.

Within a few days 120 had contracted the disease and died; within a month it was 500; by the end of the outbreak more than 600 people had died.

John Snow, a local physician who was sceptical of the ‘foul air’ theory of cholera transmission, investigated the Soho outbreak, plotting all the cases on a map and exploring the implications of the two separate water supplies that served the area.

He deduced that the disease was being spread via the water supply and that the source of the Soho outbreak had to be the Broad Street pump.

He persuaded the parish council to remove the handle of the pump and the outbreak abated.

Snow’s analysis of the Broad Street outbreak, including the apparent anomaly that workers at the Broad Street brewery had not contracted the disease (they had a daily beer allowance, which meant that they had no need of the local water pump), and subsequent cholera cases led him to demonstrate the link between inadequate sanitation and water-borne disease.

For this work Snow became known as the father of epidemiology and one of the founders of the movement for public health.

It seems entirely fitting that a pub near the site of the fateful pump now bears his name.

Epidemics of infectious diseases were a huge public health problem in 19th century Britain. In the 20th century we have a completely different epidemic: a lack of physical activity.

Active transport has a role to play in helping tackle this epidemic and Cyclox is confident that Oxford’s own Broad Street pump will make a contribution to public health.

This time, however, the handle will need to stay on the pump.