The Ghost Map
Dana Triplett
March 1, 2013
Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map. New York, Penguin, 2006.
The expansive growth of industrial London awakens an epidemic that seems to kill indiscriminately. Cholera is a disease that had no discernible cause, much less a cure, during the nineteenth century. People are dying regardless of their social class or living conditions. Looking for a method to the madness that is cholera, Doctor John Snow begins a quest to investigate the spread of the disease throughout a neighborhood in London and find its source. Snow’s drive to explain the outbreak puts him into direct competition with state run public health departments who do not like to be proven wrong. Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map Chronicles Dr. Snow’s investigation of the rapid cholera outbreak in Golden Square, using contemporary accounts to outline the thought processes of Dr. Snow and his opposition. Johnson also uses these accounts to tie anecdotes into the story that give us an idea of daily life in Victorian London as well as relating this period in history to modern events.
Johnson paints the reader a picture of the crowded impoverished conditions of London during the Industrial Revolution. The situation is so dire that many people collect dung just to try and make a living. Public water sources are often contaminated with waste products that overflow from outdated sewage systems. It is near one of these water pumps, on Broad Street, that the story truly begins. An infant contracts cholera and her soiled diaper is thrown into a cesspool starting a chain reaction that will leave over seven hundred people, in a single neighborhood, dead.
Reverend Henry Whitehead is a local priest that lives in the area. At the beginning of the outbreak he visits the sick and offers prayers and condolences without a major interest in the cause of this spread of cholera. At the time many diseases were thought to propagate through contaminated air, or miasma. While Whitehead is having personal
March 1, 2013
Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map. New York, Penguin, 2006.
The expansive growth of industrial London awakens an epidemic that seems to kill indiscriminately. Cholera is a disease that had no discernible cause, much less a cure, during the nineteenth century. People are dying regardless of their social class or living conditions. Looking for a method to the madness that is cholera, Doctor John Snow begins a quest to investigate the spread of the disease throughout a neighborhood in London and find its source. Snow’s drive to explain the outbreak puts him into direct competition with state run public health departments who do not like to be proven wrong. Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map Chronicles Dr. Snow’s investigation of the rapid cholera outbreak in Golden Square, using contemporary accounts to outline the thought processes of Dr. Snow and his opposition. Johnson also uses these accounts to tie anecdotes into the story that give us an idea of daily life in Victorian London as well as relating this period in history to modern events.
Johnson paints the reader a picture of the crowded impoverished conditions of London during the Industrial Revolution. The situation is so dire that many people collect dung just to try and make a living. Public water sources are often contaminated with waste products that overflow from outdated sewage systems. It is near one of these water pumps, on Broad Street, that the story truly begins. An infant contracts cholera and her soiled diaper is thrown into a cesspool starting a chain reaction that will leave over seven hundred people, in a single neighborhood, dead.
Reverend Henry Whitehead is a local priest that lives in the area. At the beginning of the outbreak he visits the sick and offers prayers and condolences without a major interest in the cause of this spread of cholera. At the time many diseases were thought to propagate through contaminated air, or miasma. While Whitehead is having personal